I’ve got a confession (Usher Part II) to make. I had not heard of Los Campesinos! until the Hood Internet “dropped” their Mixtape Volume Three back in October. Since then, I haven’t been able to get “The Year This Club Broke (My Heart)” off my iPod.
So when I heard Los Campesinos! were coming to Birmingham, I was pretty excited. This is one of those shows that makes you step back and appreciate what Bottletree is doing for the Magic City (p4k already called this “highest-energy tour of the year”) and why we all need to be supporting Alabama Public Television (sadly, I didn’t notice any We Have Signal cameramen at the show).
Anyways, we caught the tail end of Titus Andronicus’ set, and when the flyer says the show starts at 9, they mean 9. I wasn’t familiar with any of TA’s music, but I did like whatever song they closed with (I’m guessing their jangly, noise-rock sounds better on record, than live in concert).
Los Campesinos! play the brand of pop-sensible (keyboards, glockenspiel, other assorted percussion, etc.) British (err, Welsh) music you can sing and dance along to. They played a good bit of songs off last Springs’s debut (I bought Hold On Now, Youngster this weekend, and haven’t been able to get it off my iPod either) and just looked like they were having fun (these kids don’t look much older than 20, and I swear their drummer was Paulie Bleeker’s double last year in Juno).
The near sellout crowd (apparently, Carolina Chocolate Drops at Workplay was a pretty sweet ticket Friday night as well) were most excited about “My Year in Lists” and “You! Me! Dancing!” (the video has over 800K views on Youtube) and Los Campesinos! were very complimentary of our city (singer, Gareth, said it was “nice to play somewhere that doesn’t look like every other bar in America”). Hopefully, this visit will not be their last.
Tags: alex h, hood internet, los campesinos!
Carolina Chocolate Drops were good Friday, but the show they did at last years City Stages topped Fridays performance, imho.