Us Brits may moan about the weather and the tax, but when it comes to live music, this tiny island is a delight. From where else in the world could we nip off to Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Copenhagen or, er, Minehead to indulge our burning desire for live music and still scrape into work on a Monday morning? And where else could we hop between a 60,000-seat football stadium packed full of air-punching Bruce Springsteen fans and a miniscule bar where a fragile Edwyn Collins plays a secret set to 50 tearful Dundonians (and one TLOBF writer)? Eight of the site’s most obsessive gig-goers present their picks of the year’s live music. Continue Reading

The Research are a band, a band a band a band a band a band a band a BAND. This may sound like it’s a pretty obvious statement. Unless they’re one of those solo projects that have a name like a band then it pretty much goes without saying. But that’s not really my point. My point is that there is just something so hopelessly band-*like* about The Research, like they could just be generic image #1 when you *think of a band*, they just sound like… a band. A band of people playing songs. Continue Reading

“Music is magic. You know this already. You’ve known this from the first time a record sent a divine shiver down your spine or a band changed the way you dressed forever. How does something that’s just noises arranged in sequence do that? No one knows. It’s just magic. Everyone knows that. It’s just that some realise that it’s also more than metaphor.” Continue Reading

“Even if we’re scenesters, its not the scene you’re thinking…”

Is there any more unlikely band in the world than Los Campesinos right now? I mean in terms of career trajectory if nothing else. ‘You Me Dancing’ thrust them via the DrownedInSound message boards from normal-people-just-messing-around obscurity to potential indie-pop superstardom. At the start of this year and the release of Hold On Now Youngster I saw them playing with Johnny Foreigner to an emo-band-I’ve-never-heard-of challenging horde of excited underage kids who seemed to mostly just go crazy for ‘You Throw Parties, We Throw Knives’. Continue Reading

It’s that time of year again… We’re making our list and checking it twice, trying to find out who’s been naughty or nice. Yes, it’s our Album of the Year! More coveted than a shiny penny, more famous than the winner of last year’s X-Factor and guaranteed to start debate!

This year, to shuffle blame away from TLOBF HQ, we’re getting YOU, yes, YOU the reader, to vote for the albums YOU think are the best 2008 had to offer. We’ve whittled down a mammoth list of prospective albums to a mere 50. It’s tough work, but someone had to do it.

So, mouse button at the ready - get clicking! You can pick as many albums as you like, there are no limits. If you feel it’s worthy of “Album of the Year” status, then do the right thing and cast your vote.

If you need some help making that all-important decision, you can read our take on the albums listed in our 2008 archive here.

The poll will close on Friday December 12th.

There is a prize up for grabs for one lucky reader. Some very kind record companies behind the following 50 records have offered up a selection of prizes including: ultra-rare vinyl, posters, t-shirts and CDs by some of the nominees, plus a pair of tickets to see the sold-out Fleet Foxes show at London Roundhouse in February 2009. To be in with a chance of winning this mammoth and hugely exciting prize, enter your details at the bottom of this page. The lucky winner will be notified via email. Competition closes on Friday 12th December.

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Los Campesinos. All photographs courtesy of Valerio Berdini and taken at the London leg of the tour.

I think me and my friends are getting boring. I should be at the peak of my young-and-aliveness, but now the golden days of spring are past and I’m just tired and contented, this once-exuberant music nerd, captured at least for now the perfect beautiful, dorky girl everything about my hobbies had been basically aimed at, and I’m left just… enjoying it? Since when is mere enjoyment something to fucking feel?

If this accelerated process of spiritual ageing is actually mostly in my head as a sort of dumbass way of processing genuine happiness (ohh god look at me, I’m such a contented cunt) but anyway, if this is anything to go by, I’ll be looking back nostalgically at ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ somewhen about next month. I don’t care whether you can maybe state a case for its ubiquity or not, it’s a really special song that basically sums up perfectly everything about the indie clubnight experience. But hey, haha, when Los Campesinos play it tonight I’m not one of the kids at the front bouncing about so alive, I’m slightly detached, jerking about, appreciating it myself in my own little bubble of “yes, this is personally significant”-ince. Continue Reading

Just five months after the release of their, in the end disappointing, debut, Los Campesinos! return with a brand new record, ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’.

Entering the studio with the plan to record a new EP, the band were so happy with the 10 tracks they recorded, they wanted to put them out immediately.

In the band’s own words:

Hello there!

We at Los Campesinos! are very happy to announce the release of a new record. Coming on October 13th is ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’: ten brand new tracks recorded in Seattle from June 12-23rd with our dear friend Mr John Goodmanson (Blonde Redhead, Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Wedding Present, Wu Tang) and mixed immediately after at Monnow Valley in Wales.

And despite ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ being only 5 or so months old, we wanted to emphasise that this is no post-album cash in.

It’s no B-Sides and rarities or “songs that weren’t good enough to be on the album cobbled together with some remixes and field recordings of Cardiff’s indie scene”; it’s ten all-new tracks that none of you have ever heard before.

Sure, we considered re-releasing a radio-edit of ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ and trying to get famous and scraping another tour out of that, but our parents unanimously agreed that if we did they would never speak to us again.

Rather, we are blessed with having an incredibly supportive record label in Wichita, and they are as excited about such freedom, frivolities and spontaneity in releases as we are.

The tracklisting looks something like this:

1. Ways To Make It Through The Wall
2. Miserabilia
3. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
4. Between An Erupting Earth And An Exploding Sky
5. You’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing
6. It’s Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song For The Other Kurt)
7. The End Of The Asterisk
8. Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown # 1
9. Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time
10. All Your Kayfabe Friends

Let’s hope it’s a more stripped back and rawer affair than its overly polished predecessor.

Currently finsishing up a UK tour before heading out to Europe, America and beyond in support of debut album Hold On Now, Youngster are TLOBF favourites Los Campesinos! Our very own Ro Cemm took it to the home counties to catch the Welsh tweexcore brigade as they played the rock n roll mecca that is Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Apparently Gareth Campesinos! was in fine form, telling it how it is to an overexcited audience member : “Your a big lad. If you jump into people its gonna hurt. You were a prick during Lovvers and your being a prick now. Fuck off!” Good stuff. Backed by Brighton’s Lonely Ghosts and Nottingham’s Lovvers, enjoy the pictures below.

Lonely Ghosts

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“Teenage dreams, so hard to beat“. These were the words on John Peel’s headstone, finally erected last week in the graveyard of St. Andrews Church in Great Finborough. Without doubt, the teenage dreams, tales of love, bedroom dancing and having a good time that Los Campesinos! offer up on Hold on now, Youngster would have struck a chord with Mr. Peel, no doubt reminding him of a turbocharged version of a Bearsuit or Bis.

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