We are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

The songs explode with more energy than the whole underground combined. This makes it very hard not to love Los Campesinos!, and makes it easier to forgive the fact this record could have been better served as an EP. [Nov 2008, p.162]

Second LP We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed continues on the path blazed by their 2008 debut, all urgent joy, jubilation, and communion.

They’ve upped the sonic oomph a notch, leaning on the piano, violin, xylophones and perfectly mangled Pavement-style guitar mess.

Re-emerging after a mere eight month gestation with their second album (they're referring to it as an extended EP just to be difficult, but whatever), the only natural assumption would be that the whirlwind of inconsistency smashes on unabated. And in some respects it does, but key to this record's fortunes is a sense that first they're running out of ideas and second have chilled their bones to become less rigidly obsessed with quantity and cleverness and proving their self-worth.

So while it is more of the same, when that same is such an unpretentious joy to listen to it's churlish to complain. That's not to say it's perfect though: one or two tracks are slightly stretched beyond their natural life.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is full of half-heartfelt, half-hilarious songs that capture the rush of being young in a noisy new century.

The painful detail and joyful exuberance are there once they get going. But in under two years this Welsh punk sextet has matured/devolved from tromping over their pan-sexual alienation like so many glockenspiel-wielding grape dancers to enacting "miserabilia" about how unfulfilling it is to get on your knees next to a urinal.

Los Campesinos! continue to compose intelligent, well thought out songs, endearingly so, and eschew any trends other than the one they're setting for themselves.

Cooked up in a session originally meant to spawn a batch of B-sides, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed instead debuts 10 songs that outstrip LC!’s debut album at every turn.

For Los Campesinos! to come up with such a strong follow-up not even a year after their last is an amazing feat.

At just over a half hour long, it's more EP than album, but even these (ostensible) B-sides make for a giddy and infectious sprint.

Forget the technicalities and call it what it is: a messy, glorious, and cohesive artistic document of internet café-era indie life that sounds best when sung by heart.

The band is still firing on all cylinders, even when they downshift into the textured, minor key electronics-and-acoustic guitar lament of 'Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time' or the instrumental snippet 'Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky' (strangely reminiscent of Mogwai’s 'The Sun Smells Too Loud'), and no one can make bitterly self-aware misanthropy sound quite as exciting as this band does.

We Are Beautiful might not be the pinnacle for Los Campesinos!, but it does prove they’re rapidly on their way up.

As the exclaimation mark in their name suggests, their every sentiment is exaggerated, but they do do careening anxiety rather well. [Nov 2008, p.110]

On Los Campesinos' second LP, he sings about puking in a Mexican restaurant and fucking up some dude's teeth, but he makes those lyrics sound almost uplifting thanks to a supercharged mix of violins, guitars and glockenspiel.

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.

At once a thorough progression of style, a blisteringly catchy indie pop record, a more accomplished indie rock record, and finally, a wordier but far heftier slice-of-life ode to being young and younger-than-you-feel (oh, love), We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed follows up on a promise and then some.

This new pack is smart, immediate, and anthemic in the way only bedroom-pop fanatics can muster.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is an immensely enjoyable, plain-sailing cluster of energetic, singable melodies.