Roomfuls of Vacuum, Roomfuls of Air
Just back from Los Campesinos! who… well, remain a sort of iconic and useful band for me, in many ways. New material sounds interesting. Old stuff sounds furious. Gareth remains the angriest xylophone player on the planet. But aside from all that, there was a genuinely strange moment I have to write about.
I’ve mentioned in passing that there’s a couple of things which I wrote which Gareth appropriated - with permission - for lyrics before. The title of the second album is paraphrased from my description of them in an end-of-year write up and a line from Phonogram 1.1 (”A room full of vaccuum and a room full of air look the same”) is put to task in a particularly shouty section of opener “Ways To Make It Through The Wall”. Which always brings a smile to myself when I hear it, just because it’s so odd - and what Gareth does with it is very different from what I used with Kohl, openly defiant rather than the first part where old David even appears vaguely human.
Anyway - it’s a different thing to hear it sung live. Los Camp! fans are passionate. Lyrics are screamed out. Glancing to one side and seeing dozens of faces howling something which I abstractly wrote… well… there’s a couple of responses. Firstly, it’s a tiny moment of alienation - like I imagine (say) Chic feel when they hear something they created lifted and repurposes. As in, you recognise the craft and recognise that it’s part of something you did - but it’s also something else. Secondly, there’s the part that’s fuckinghelltheyaresingingsomeshitIwrote. Which is… well, I suspect it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to feeling like bloody Bono or something. It’s powerful and odd and direct, and I can see how people who get it every night, from every single line of every single song go proper mental so often. God know what Gareth feels like.
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It’s only been the once, but having people sing something I wrote back at me is definitely one of the most intoxicating things that’s ever happened to me. Congrats!
By Karl Ruben on 10.30.09 12:44 pm
I saw them in Exeter, oddly enough the day Jamie was talking about recreating their old MySpace for a forthcoming Phonogram. Having only heard a couple of tracks before, I could completely see why they’d fit into Phono-land.
And yes, impressively aggressive xylophone playing.
By Mark Clapham on 10.30.09 6:44 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by hexapodium: @kierongillen on Los Campesinos! at http://tinyurl.com/yz68mve - @neiborhoodlaika, you’ll probably appreciate this one….
By uberVU - social comments on 10.31.09 12:45 am
Isn’t pretty much all of “Ways To Make It Through The Wall”, and indeed all of the first three tracks of WABWAD particularly shouty sections?
By Jonny Kiehlmann on 11.03.09 2:38 pm
its a GLOCKENSPIEL, people.
I think I described G’s glock sound as “hard and bright and violent” in a particularly mopey and navel-regarding cover feature on the band.
By davidmc on 11.12.09 4:50 pm
That doesn’t sound like you, David.
(STRONG FEATURE)
KG
By Kieron Gillen on 11.12.09 5:29 pm
I actually haven’t really listened to them properly since I wrote that feature, because it’s kind of hard to go back to something like that where you have to immerse yourself in something quite intensely in a concentrated period of time, and I don’t really listen to indie-type stuff much anymore, but I was thinking about this the other day: LC! are a great band.
You get the feeling even if the new album somehow turned out to be the last thing they ever do, that history will remember them fondly, and they’ll be one of those cult, slightly wrong-sounding, bands who people treasure and talk about a lot because they will wind up on a lot of mixtapes, on a lot of stereos at the end of parties, or in bedrooms soundtracking wrongness. I think to people in their teens now, they will be what bands like Prolapse are to my generation - this slightly special thing which interfered with the mainstream just long enough to flirt with fame, but which people at the time mostly got a bit wrong or never quite understood.
I probably shouldn’t talk about them like they’re dead though.
By davidmc on 11.13.09 5:31 pm
It’s like, in two years time I don’t think anyone is going to be listening to their Pains Of Being Pure At Heart records anymore, and they’re going to be feeling faintly embarrassed about the whole thing, and at that same time a lot of the LC! detractors are going to have to admit yeah, we misjudged that a bit.
By davidmc on 11.13.09 5:35 pm
The question I’m asking myself is should I forward Issue 6 of PG to you.
KG
By Kieron Gillen on 11.13.09 5:39 pm
Basically what I’m saying is that it’s an inverse-fad kind of thing.
Randomly - did you ever use my Robyn thing?
By davidmc on 11.13.09 5:41 pm
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