Complacent And Self-Involved

Los Campesinos! “Romance Is Boring”

I realize that there is a lot of dark wit in Los Campesinos!’ music, but I’m not sure if the things I find amusing about them are always the things they intend to be funny. They’re a knowing self-parody, pushing the envelope of overly precious, vainly articulate youthful melodrama in a way similar to emo titans Fall Out Boy and Say Anything, but there’s something about them that seems a lot more…sincere? Is that it? Whatever it is that makes their anger seem more real, that is what makes them kinda unintentionally hilarious but also very relatable. The words spill out, but nothing sounds much like what you’d actually say out loud, and either more like l’esprit de escalier stuff that you think after you’ve had your little confrontation, or the sort of shit you’d spew out on a friends-locked Livejournal entry or a bitter email that you should probably keep saved in the draft folder. “Romance Is Boring,” by far the best Los Campesinos! song I’ve ever heard, is essentially a mid-90s indie rock song in the vein of Archers of Loaf remade with 00s indie aesthetics, i.e. over-stuffed meters and waaaaay too many people playing and singing at once. That’s not a problem, though, because part of what makes this song so appealing is hearing a whole crowd of Welsh kids scream at each other for wanting to fuck each other.

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