los campesinos! - hold on now, youngster

.:: Recorded in Canada and produced by David Newfeld (Broken Social Scene) the album is a frenetic mix of Indie Pop inspired by the likes of Architecture In Helsinki, Pavement and Bis. It's been a hugely eventful year for the band: a right-of-passage, roller coaster, massively exciting kind of year, that's seen them make an impressive dent globally, experience an avalanche of 'firsts', and subsequently proved their mettle as a Pop collective of huge potential...and all before they've even released their debut album! 11 tracks.

Few bands have made as much out of this ideal of enthusiast-as-artist as Los Campesinos!. Formed two years ago at Cardiff University in Wales, the indie-pop septet first grabbed attention on MySpace, but their music embodies some the best elements of the past 30 years of indie music.

It's not just the superficial connections, like their Ramones- or Pastels-style surnames, band-made zine, or the cover of Pavement B-side "Frontwards" on last year's slept-on Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP. With boy/girl exclamations (!) befitting a punkier Heavenly/Calvin Johnson collaboration (!!), the lavish instrumentation of Broken Social Scene (whose Dave Newfeld produces), childish glockenspiels, and exuberantly buzzing guitars, debut album Hold on Now, Youngster... is a giddy, tuneful love note to individuality, pathos, smarts, silliness, and everything else indie pop built its name on.

There's even the requisite ironic self-mockery-- nobody actually thought this stuff was cool, did they?


download: los campesinos! - hold on now, youngster

pass: indie-ground.blogspot.com