Los Campesinos! For The Win

I love it when I beat Pitchfork to the punch. I’ve been listening to Los Campesinos! for quite a while now after coming across their phenomenal song You! Me! Dancing! during my exploration of 2006’s countless end-of-year lists (I don’t even know who Phil Gyford is).

Several weeks later Pitchfork made small mention of them. And today they published their review of LC!’s first stateside release, Sticking Fingers Into Sockets, giving it a whopping 8.4. That’s huge for Pitchfork, in case you weren’t aware. And, for once, their excessive verbage does an album justice:

Silly names aside, Los Campesinos! play superbly crafted indie pop that bounces off walls like Love Is All, grins with the childlike exuberance of Bis, and throws the toy chest into its arrangements like Architecture in Helsinki. Glockenspiels and pizzicato violin veer into reckless guitar riffs and full-bodied handclaps– or fizz over, like Mentos and Coke, into happy-stupid crescendos. Gareth shares lead vocal duties with the similarly pseudonymous Aleksandra Campesino!, and their boy-girl exchanges give the music an extra, sweet frisson. Newfeld’s treatment turns “You! Me! Dancing!” from a lo-fi rallying cry into an unstoppable force for converting spindly legs into dancefloor blurs.

Twee on, kids. Twee on.