Los Campesinos! Interview

After they easily scored 10/10 in our review, Los Campesinos! are here to answer couple of questions about this and that. Gareth Campesinos! is answering for your pleasure! So how does it feel to be Los Campesinos! these days? You seem to be getting a lot of media attention lately.
Do people recognize you on the street?

It feels as exciting as it ever has. We're currently touring all over the place, and having a whole host of great opportunities thrust at us. I'm pleased to say I've never been recognised on the street. Fortunately we're not that famous. I cannot imagine anything more awkward.

Your album, Hold On Now, Youngsters is out this week. As you know, we like it quite a lot. What we are curious is about how come some songs got to have completely different arrangement than on EPs? Why?

The only possible answer to that is "they don't, you've made it up". The versions of You! Me! Dancing! and Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s) are identical except for re-recorded intros. Any supposed changes to arrangements are fictional.

Eh, we must be tone deaf then as we can clearly see some of the songss are rather slower (Death to Los Campesinos! for example). Anyway, how exactly do your songs get created? They sound rather complex to us.

Tom writes the music and then records a version of the song onto his computer. He'll then send me the song file and I'll write lyrics for it. We then take what we have to a practice space, where the rest of the guys will learn the song, and then we'll jig it around until it's something we're happy with.

How does it feel to tour when there's seven of you on the tourbus? What happens when someone throws a tantrum?

Well, the nature of touring means there is even more than seven of us. At this current tour we have 12 people with us. It can inevitably be quite cramped and when some are in the mood to stay up late and party and others aren't, sleep gets missed out on. But we're a sensible bunch and we know how to behave around eachother. The great thing about there being many of us is that there's always somebody different to talk to. We know each other well enough to know when to leave eachother alone, or when we need some 'alone time', so we pretty much always get along fine.

How hard is it to keep up that amazing amount of energy for every show? What's your dark secret? Coffee and chocolate or?

I think that once we find ourselves onstage, the adrenalin just takes over. Obviously there are some shows which find us a little lackluster, be it because of an unreceptive crowd, or a hangover or a generally miserable mood, but nearly always, the excitement of just being onstage, and seeing people react to our music is a great catalyst for energy.

And, finally, what's in future for Los Campesinos? What kind of sound would you like to tackle in the future?

More and more touring, and hopefully getting back to doing some recording mid-way through this year. It's impossible to say where our 'sound' will head in the future. I think if we had a plan it could all just end up sounding contrived and we'd hate that. So we'll see where we go. More keyboards though hopefully. I like keyboards.

kris // 04/03/2008