Their most recent release may be titled Hello Sadness, and the vast majority of their work may focus on such uplifting topics as heartbreak, death and bulimia, but you’d never know that from the dedicated cadre of fans at the Los Campesinos! show on Saturday. The Welsh septet has released four albums in as many years and most of those songs have dense, confessional lyrics, but that didn’t stop the crowd from jumping along, shouting out every word to every song.
Lead singer Gareth Campesinos! recognized how lucky he was to be playing in front of such a crowd. Despite having filled the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club a handful of times before, he still described his experience on tour as being “very humbling” and mentioned that “he had lots of thank yous.” This didn’t stop him, however, from mumbling nihilistic witticisms alongside his expressions of appreciation. “This is a a really fun thing to do and here is song about how each and every one of you fuckers is going to die alone,” he announced at the beginning of the encore. Campesinos! also described their show as no place for couples and reluctantly appreciated that the show fell on a Saturday night.
“That’s good for us because your enthusiasm to have a good time means that your standards are lower,” he noted.
Yet the band wouldn’t have nearly as many fans if their songs weren’t so damned upbeat. Kim Campesinos! (who we still can’t hear very well) pogoed behind the keyboards, while her brother Gareth threw himself around the stage, almost running into his drummer and guitarist in between bursts of impassioned violin playing. Although the songs from Hello Sadness don’t have quite the adrenaline of their earlier work, the emotion and hormones still run rampant. This was especially noticeable during Gareth’s over-long description of his visit to a Dupont palmist before introducing “Baby I Got the Death Rattle”. Then, as if to prove that he hadn’t quite thrown all of his energy into the set, Gareth threw himself into the crowd during closer “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks”.
