Send "Los Campesinos! " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Ew |
 Los Campesinos! are a Wales-based septet of young best-Friendsters who specialize in boy-girl harmonies, xylophone solos, and lyrics about The Breakfast Club, and 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. On ''It's Never That Easy Though, Is It,'' singer Gareth phones a crush but only gets ''another stupid ringtone.'' We'll take this over Crazy Frog any day. A...full text |
| Nme |
| Returning with a second album just eight short months after your first typically means one of two things. Either the songs just keep coming – notebooks jammed with lyrics, songs flowing out of you at every rehearsal like a jammed tap, or you’re so sick of the songs on your first album you can’t wait to write them out of existence. With Los Campesinos!, you suspect both are true. 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. No more songs about you and me dancing, or sipping cherryade and parties. No, these songs place Gareth Campesinos! right at their chaotic centre, as they are tales of collapsing relationships, bitterness and jealousy, and breathless, self-lacerating rants that splurge out dirty truths as if choked by their tightened neck-scarf....full text |
| Pitchforkmedia |
| First there's the rule about not naming your band with an exclamation point, period. Then there's the one about not changing your last names so they're all the same as the band's, unless you're the Ramones (or arguably the Pastels). Referring to yourselves in a language not spoken in your country of origin? Another bad idea. Welsh boy/girl septet Los Campesinos! proved themselves an exception to all those rules this spring with Hold on Now, Youngster..., a debut album that encapsulated the best of three decades of indie's participatory culture. There's no rule yet about not releasing a follow-up to your debut album in the same year, mostly because few bands have had the audacity to try it. Los Campesinos! are hedging their bets: they have yet to refer to We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed as their "second album," even when they announced it would come in a limited pressing with a DVD documentary, poster, and 30-page zine (including contributions from members of Xiu Xiu, Grandaddy, Tender Forever, Menomena, Parenthetical Girls, and the Beautiful South). There will be no singles (and to these ears, there are none), and some online retailers have taken to listing the 10-track, 32-minute release as a "mini-album." 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....full text |
Los Campesinos! lyrics
