Los Campesinos!

“We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed”
from the album We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
2008
iTunes

Just eight months after releasing their first full-length, Hold on Now, Youngster…, these Welsh indie poppers come bounding back with another album that’s as melodramatic as a teen love letter. This time, though, the scrawl is a bit neater.

Seasoned yet no less hyper — there’s still plenty of shouting in unison — the band lays down a more stable foundation for the lyrical zingers of singer-lyricist Gareth Campesinos (yep, the cuteness extends to sharing a surname). He jabs at exes (“I identify my star sign by asking which is least compatible with yours”) and possible paramours (“Bring over pictures of your dead pets and relatives / And we’ll just say it’s over if I don’t shed any tears”). And when keyboardist Aleksandra joins him on tracks like “Miserabilia,” her serene wisp of a voice puts his muttered asides and hysterical outbursts in even starker relief, making it hard to decide whether the boy needs a hug or a tough-love slap across the face.

Despite their proudly worn angst, the septet maintain that the best medicine for a broken heart is some quality time spent bouncing around to a scrappy melody. In the world of Los Campesinos!, the death of true love in a “public phone box, graffitied genitalia from the ceiling to floor” and the sprightly chime of a glockenspiel aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re a necessary match.