The Twee Amigos - Los Campesinos!

Gareth Campesinos! is seated next to us in the upper reaches of Centrepoint, an imposing office building situated in the heart of Tottenham Court Road, London. In the corner of the room a TV is flickering with the images that make up the majority of MTV2’s daytime programming: interchangeable, four boys with guitars, indie bands. The setting may be very ordinary but once in conversation with Gareth a buzz of excitement is palpable. Indeed these are high times for Los Campesinos! It has just been announced today that the band will be playing at next year’s ATP festival – fulfilling one of their dreams: “It’s our Wembley” Gareth enthuses. Meanwhile, somewhere in a room behind us the highly anticipated debut album from Los Campesinos! is being mixed.

The album, finished just this month, was recorded over the summer with David Newfeld. Giving some insight into the band’s relationship with the Broken Social Scene producer Gareth says, “He’s brilliant to work with because he just has these insane ideas that work out brilliantly. He has a huge amount of equipment that we can use like keyboards and guitars and all manner of things - and he really likes us and we really like him so he’s very easy to work with.” The band then mixed the album in Toronto with John Goodmanson who has previously worked with riot grrrl legends (and, exclaims Gareth, “Two of my favourite bands in the whole world”) Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. Says Gareth of their recent collaborators: “It’s just amazing to work with these people who have such amazing stories to tell and are so nice to us and enthusiastic and we’re really happy with how the album sounds.”

“It’s a pop album and it’s a Los Campesinos! album”, he pauses to check himself “I say that as if we’ve been around long enough to say things that Los Campesinos! are!” He explains, “I think we like to have these pop songs and then mess them up a bit, try and make them noisy or make people think and I think we’ve achieved that. There are some new songs that are further away from the typical upbeat pop that people might expect but it still sounds like Los Campesinos!”

Indeed the album will provide some surprises with previously unheard tracks: “There’s some that we haven’t played live before, there’s some that we barely even played as a band before, in a practice even, but they came together for the recording. I hope that there’s enough variety on there to keep people interested.” There are some more familiar songs too: “We really wanted to put out just the best album that we could. The songs that we got do work as an album; do work as a whole, so we didn’t want to leave songs off just because people have heard them before.”

We first fell in love with Los Campesinos! when we heard ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ a joyous pop number concerned with the sense of embarrassment you feel when you have to dance in a public place and realise that you’re actually not very good at that sort of thing. Every awkward indie kid’s been there right? It fizzes with the same sense of fun – the kind you instantly want to be a part of – as all the greatest pop songs. It was when we heard ‘It Started With A Mixx’ that things really took off though – an ode to one of the greatest things known to man (the mixtape) that features just the right amount of handclaps (i.e. lots).

What’s the greatest mix tape you’ve ever given or received? “I’ve got a friend called Lucy who is in Help! She Can’t Swim and we send each other mixtapes and she’s got a huge array of awesome late 90’s seven inches and a huge knowledge of riot grrrl music and she’s been quite a musical mentor to me and sends really awesome tapes and makes brilliant artwork for them and everything. I don’t really get many mixtapes, I usually just end up developing a crush on someone and thinking “I know what! I’ll make them a mixtape and then they’ll love me” and it just totally backfires and it comes across as far too try hard and just ends up scaring them with drawings … yeah, I should write a song about it! It’s probably safe to say I haven’t made any good mixtapes; they’ve all been a total disaster. Mixtapes are a truly awesome thing and infinitely better than a mix CD, although I appreciate that occasionally I do have to buckle down and make a mix CD because if I give you a tape you will never listen to it.” Gareth concludes, “I spend too much time on tapes. And thinking about tapes.”

The band’s new single, ‘The International Tweexcore Underground’ addresses the band member’s differing influences and tastes with twee pitched up against hardcore, and lyrical references to icons of both genres – including Henry Rollins and Calvin Johnson. The single is the first to be accompanied by a video in which the band appear, as opposed to the previous animated efforts. Gareth reflects upon the experience: “It was fun, it was really fun and I’m quite looking forward to getting to do another one. My sister thinks it’s amazing, she gets to show all her friends – none of her friends believed her that her brother was in a band. It was really exciting to do and a change from the animated videos. It’s weird seeing it because we’re so used to seeing each other and we saw it developing so it still feels kind of like a home video to us but it’s really exciting.”