Los Campesinos! interview
Posted on Dec 01 2006 | Tagged as: Raggy Dolls
Most people who’ve gone through university will attest that while doing exams they wished they were somewhere else. When this handful of Cardiff students come to sit their finals next summer, they’ll be wishing they were already in Canada recording their first album. Their place is booked: they just have to graduate first.
In just 18 months, indie-pop septet Los Campesinos! (Spanish for “the peasants”) have gone from a newly formed band playing in front of a handful of people in the side room of Cardiff University’s Students’ Union to the new darlings of the music biz. Last month’s gig in Clwb Ifor Bach was their final one as an unsigned act, and they’ve since signed to Wichita Recordings, home of Bloc Party.
A week later, a friend’s attic is annexed for our interview by exuberant frontman Gareth; his singing foil Aleks; drummer Ollie, redolent of The Muppet Show’s Animal; guitar duo Tom and Neil; and quiet keyboard-and-violinist Harriet. Bassist Ellen couldn’t make it, fitting in practice, gigs and interviews an all-too-common problem for a student band.
Yet it’s telling that probably the weakest song in their repertoire is a cover version (of Pavement’s Frontwards), despite having to knock out songs in whatever free time they have outside of lectures. Their MySpace declares that they “just threw a few chords together”. Is it really like that?
“Well first I do the music side of things,” says Tom. “Sometimes that comes quickly, sometimes you have to work on things a bit more – actually, it’s slowing down with newer stuff as we try to spend more time perfecting smaller details.”
“Then generally I’ll come up with some lyrics, and then one-by-one decide which ones I don’t like and change them,” adds Gareth. “Then maybe five minutes before we go on stage say to Aleks, ‘actually, can you sing this instead?’ and scare her. I have a reserve of ideas, but it all depends on the music.”
While they clearly gel on stage, Los Campesinos! have presented something of a technical challenge. Aleks has had to get “a special microphone” as she’s rather quiet, and Clwb’s soundman – now permanently working with the band – described mixing Gareth as “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do”.
“It’s probably because I shout,” Gareth says. “In soundcheck I’m really shy and just say ‘one two’ quietly into the mic, and then I get wasted and go on stage. Oh, yeah – I had an ear infection, that might have been why!”
Songwriting and performing together is made much easier by the fact that the band are such close friends, and often socialise collectively. Nights out at the Twisted By Design event at Castle Street venue Dempseys formed the basis for their song You! Me! Dancing! – and now they hear their music played there.
“Depending on how drunk we are, we either react very enthusiastically, or very embarrassed,” Gareth says. “It’s very flattering when you see people you don’t recognise dancing to your song. And people singing along when we’re playing – it’s weird. Everything is weird.”
They’re showing no sign of letting the fame go to their heads yet, then – despite tales of having established bands over for the night. When Canada’s We Say Party! You Say Die! – whose name was adapted for Los Campesinos!’s song We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives – played Cardiff, they bunked down at Harriet’s place, after they didn’t have a place to stay.
“Well, we felt quite sorry for them,” says Harriet. “I thought they’d think I was really weird. But I asked them if they’d rather stay at mine and they were like, ‘Yes please!’.”
“It was when we were about to do our tour – four or five dates,” chips in Tom. “And the fear really kind of gripped us when we realised how hard a time they were having.”
The humility continues. One internet review of the band’s latest gig described Aleks as “the most beautiful woman in the world”. She’s having none of it. “What am I supposed to say to that?” she says. “It’s not true!” Suggestions of a potential future FHM covershoot are met with a coy look that suggests she’d actually be flattered. Officially? “We’d have to ask Ellen.”
Despite being self-confessedly a bit too nice for rock n roll, they’re not too shy to disagree with a certain star of Celebrity Big Brother, the Ordinary Boys’ Preston, who claimed in the NME last week that MySpace was “dead” – that it’s no longer a useful tool from new bands to get themselves noticed now that established acts are using it to promote themselves.
“It’s because nobody cares about his band,” claims Gareth. “We recognise 100% that we wouldn’t be here without MySpace. It’s vital, now, to any band – I don’t see how any band could make it rapidly without one at the moment, regardless of how good the music is.
“It’s a convenient way to promote signed bands as well – if I read about a new band and I want to hear them, I’ll go on MySpace and search their profile.”
And that might just give Los Campesinos! an answer to their own question. On It Started With A Mix, they ponder, “how did it come to this?” Tom has it: “Murdoch can take credit for us.”
See Los Campesinos! on MySpace at MySpace.com/loscampesinos