Los Campesinos!

Neil Campesinos!, the guitarist in this year’s most hyped indie-pop band, chats about their debut album, their all-ages shows and the impending egomania.

A line on We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison runs “four sweaty boys with guitars say nothing about my life”. Do you think Los Campesinos! provide a healthy alternative to that traditional British indie outfit?

I really hope so. When we first started we were completely sure that we didn’t want to be that standard lad-rock post-Libertines, boring, stale…

The View!

Yeah! There are bands like that coming out every single week. We didn’t know what we wanted to sound like, we only had ideas of what we didn’t want to sound like.

You associate a lot more with North American acts. Are you complete anglophobes? Are there any British bands or scenes that do interest you?

Oh yeah, there’s still lots of awesome British bands. On the tour we’re doing we’re playing with Johnny Foreigner from Birmingham, and 4 Or 5 Magicians, which are bands that we all know. So we’re not anglophobes at all. British bands that get press attention aren’t particularly good. And all our favourite bands are American anyway.

Have you found your reception in North America has been more welcoming?

The North American reception has been quite surreal. They read the British press in a different way. I can’t fathom the fact that we can go to gigs in America and play to people who are singing all the words along. I guess the internet has done so much for us. It’s really amazing.

You’re signed to Arts and Crafts over there which is fairly prestigious. You have a similar sound and ethos to other bands on that label. Did that play a big part in you choosing to sign with them?

I think the A+C thing was down to a lot of bands on that label. We got to work with David Newfield who’s connected with Broken Social Scene. It all just came about without us looking for it. We never really considered getting on a record label in America. When the Wichita thing happened they were like “We’ll get someone to put it out in North America too. How about Arts and Crafts?”, those two labels have a connection. So we were like “Why the hell not!” It was very flattering. A year ago we were huge fans of that label, and now they’re asking us to be part of their roster.

Have you met any of the bands you like off the label yet?

Yeah! Several times. I bumped into Kevin Drew in Toronto at a gig. Well, he bumped into me, I didn’t even notice him at first! We’ve met them all now, they’re all really nice. David Newfield especially so.

Do you think he’s made a contribution to your sound?

Yeah without a doubt! He’s such more musically advanced than us in so many ways. He’s older than us, he’s got more experience. He has ideas that we’ve never even thought of, and this vast array of instruments, mics, compressors, everything. He’s exactly… a mad scientist, but he’d be like “Let’s try this through a 1940s vintage amp.” And it would work.

A lot of your influences, like Pavement, are distinctly lo-fi, but the Los Campesinos! sound is quite clean. Was that conscious?

We didn’t necessarily want to go for a clean record, but somewhere in between… I don’t think we could have gotten away with releasing a lo-fi record, although it would have been amazing. I don’t think it’s a super-clean mix, but I guess it is essentially a pop record. I think our first record almost has to be a pop record. It’s meant to be fun. Not mainstream pop, that American type of indie pop.

Is Los Campesinos! the dayjob now?

Yeah. We just graduated in June. To be able to walk out of university straight into this is a bit ridiculous.

I know it’s a bit into the future, but do you think you’ll be a quick-fire releaser of albums, or will you take your time over them? You haven’t been together that long, and your first album is already finished.

Well, Hold On Now, Youngster comes out in February, and we’ll pretty much tour this year out. The longer you drag it out, the longer you get to be in a band for, so I think we’ll take our time!

Milk it for all it’s worth! Release You! Me! Dancing! four times!

No! No! That is a no-no. It’s so frustrating when bands re-release their songs… If you’ve not made it by now, stop trying! If that first single you released three years ago isn’t popular now, it’s not going to get popular. Just go away and quit! If you’re not in a band where you want to release material because it excites you, why are you in one? Just to get famous.

Most of your gigs on the upcoming tour are all ages gigs, is it a fight with venues to allow this?

It has been, some venues make a big deal of it. I don’t know why, I’ve been to plenty of gigs where it’s not over 18s. Some people just don’t like it. Gareth (singer and lyricist) is quite active in getting our gigs all ages. I like it, it makes the crowd more exciting. When I was 14 or 15 at a gig I’d go mental, whereas if I go to a gig now I’ll probably just stand there, move my head and say “Yeah, this is good”.

Have you noticed at your gigs whether people are like that? Static, with some head-nodding thrown in, or have you been getting a more excitable reaction?

Actually, really amazingly, we’ve been getting really excited reactions. During our UK tour we had stage invasions. Generally we do get an exciting crowd. We find it weird, because when we go to gigs we’re not like that. We’ll just enjoy the music and not go mental. Maybe they actually HATE the music, that’s why they’re going mental.

That’s a fucked up way to look at it! Last time you played some of the band seemed quite nervous. I suppose it was the first time you’d been on tour. Do you think next time you’ll be more comfortable on stage?

Yeah I hope so anyway. That was pretty much one of the first gigs of a big tour. We’ll be much more comfortable now. We’ve much more songs to play. We’ve not even started learning them yet. They’re songs we played for the album but haven’t actually played live on the album yet, as a band proper. When we recorded the album we didn’t really play the songs together, as a band. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks, how that goes. When we realize we probably should have started practicing about two weeks ago. I think we’ll still be nervous, if a little bit more confident. But still nervous, and still excited.

Is Los Campesinos! a democracy?

Yeah, I guess it is. Everyone has differences at times, but most of the time it’s all positive. We do try and always agree on, say support acts, and tracklisting and album names. Gareth writes all the lyrics, Tom writes a lot of the lead lines and hooks, and we’ll all structure and arrange it and add our own parts into it.

Speaking of tracklistings, you left International Tweexcore Underground, It Started With A Mixx, and We Throw Parties! You Throw Knives! off the album. Did you want an album of mainly new material or were you just bored of the older songs?

We just really wanted to get a mix of newer material and material that had been released, and then songs people new anyway. So we left International Tweexcore Underground off the album because it didn’t fit in terms of the mix of the album and sonically… also we just liked the idea of a standalone concept single. We left It Started With A Mixx off because it’s an old song, and we’ve played it for a long time. Perhaps it wouldn’t fit on the album. And the same goes for We Throw Parties!. We still really like it, we’ll still play it live, but it was time to move on. I think we made the right choice.

How easily did the songs come together for the album, it doesn’t seem like you had a lot of time to make it?

I guess a lot of them, even the new ones had already been totally written, practised and demoed. We had more songs that we didn’t pick to go on the album. It didn’t feel particularly stressful at the time, even though we didn’t have a lot of time. We approached it quite sensibly. We knew how much we had to get done, so we focused and did it. Also, we were staying in a town where there was nothing at all to do, it was very dull, which meant we didn’t get distracted at all.

It is a “big” album, are you ready for the inevitable backlash against it? The band gets so much positive press, do you think it’ll be difficult when negative comments start appearing?

Probably. But so what? However it balances out, it doesn’t really matter anyway. We’ll do what we want to do. It all depends on how seriously you take yourself, and how seriously you take other people’s comments, and one thing we really don’t want to do is take ourselves too seriously. We’re well aware this bubble could break, in a year’s time people might not give a shit about us, and if that’s the case it’ll be sad. But we’ve had this opportunity, and none of us ever expected to do this, none of us aimed to do this. Every day on tour, I know it sounds really cheesy, but every day is exciting.

You’ve been getting an awful lot of press for a young band, how’ve you been dealing with it?

Just not thinking about it too much, not taking it too seriously… When you see yourself in magazines you like, say Pitchfork or Plan B that’s cool. If people ask to do an interview with us it’s really flattering that somebody cares that much, whether it’s national press, university press, or fanzines. It’s so surreal that people care at all what we have to say.

Do you think the ego will come eventually?

Oh yeah, hopefully. We’re practising it now… Not really, though, we never meant for this to happen, and it wouldn’t be fair to get too carried away with it.