Los Campesinos! are the type of band that you have either never heard of, or are madly in love with. Those who have heard of them relish every new musical morsel with glee. Every key pressed on the synth evokes a swoon, and said fans have seen them live more times than some of their closest relatives. However, it would be a huge mistake to call their fanbase “small”. The band has toured the globe, playing dates stretching from South America to Australia, with fans on Tumblr screaming out for them to come and play their home town in far flung corners of the globe. Such a global fan base is an impressive feat for a band formed by mates at Cardiff University in 2006. Their first full-length album Hold On Now Youngster (2008) was met with high critical praise. Documenting tales of teenage heartbreak whilst retaining biting humour, many would say the album’s xylophone and violin filled annals still sound as great as when it was released seven years ago.
However, the band’s frontman Gareth Campesinos! is ambivalent towards the collection of songs written in his song-writing youth. “‘Matured’ is a pretentious word,” he says. “But I would say our song writing and musical ability has developed massively. There are some songs on the first album that I am still very fond of, and others where I feel like I was trying too hard while writing the lyrics. My greatest weakness as a lyricist over the first 18 months or so was a willingness to pre-empt what I thought people wanted to hear from our band. Subsequently, a lot of it is not particularly genuine or sincere. My main issue with the first album is that, in comparison to those which have followed, it sounds a terrible mess.” Yet, it is not just skills of individuals that have altered over the band’s career, but the individuals themselves. To date, four of the band’s original septet have left to pursue various other career paths.
Such a change in composition and dynamic could perfectly reasonably be a huge strain. However, in Gareth’s opinion, the lineup changes have had positive effects. “Every change that has occurred in the band’s line-up has improved us musically. But, more importantly, it has made us a tighter-knit unit. Los Campesinos! has always felt bigger than the sum of its parts, and when somebody has chosen to leave the band, it’s galvanised the rest of us to make us better than we were before, and we’ve achieved that every time.”
The band is undoubtedly a strong unit. But what is also refreshing to find is the individuals that make up the unit as a whole are grounded individuals living in the real world. The members each have full time day jobs, which has both positive and negative effects. “It’s both easy and hard balancing work and the band. When the band was full-time I felt huge guilt that I was earning a living from doing very little. I like working , and feeling like I’m contributing to something, but I also find it very hard to focus in on creative things sometimes. It’s difficult to find the free time to write, I suppose. As for choosing one over the other, the only choice that could be made was to concentrate on work, because to choose the band would be to choose to be broke, and that’s not really viable! Fortunately, we just about manage to keep both going.”
The fact that the band balances work, producing, and touring means that when live performances are forthcoming, they put their all into them. Gareth makes it clear how sincerely he and the band love playing to an audience of receptive fans screaming out their lyrics, and touring with emerging support bands. That is, as long as they are “Good people, good drinkers, and no[t] bigots.”
After five albums, where does any band turn next? As Gareth explains, “We’re very much at a crossroads. The pressure to earn a living through conventional work is unforgiving and leaves little time for us to write music, especially without the level of record label support we’ve had in the past. But we believe in the band more than we ever have, and we’ll start work on something soon.”
