Exactly ten years after the original on October 29th, Los Campesinos! remastered their album “No Blues.” Every song got a remaster, and the album cover was changed only slightly. There are ten songs on the album and it runs for about forty minutes. This album retains the energy that made it good the first time and the remaster just makes that sound richer. Los Campesinos! is popular for the Romance is Boring remaster and the You! Me! Dancing! remaster. They got their start at a college in Cardiff, Wales, with their EP Sticking Fingers into Sockets, which has a very particular sound that they still carry with them to this day; upbeat sound with depressing lyrics.
Their last remaster was Hello Sadness in 2011 with a lot of new music in between, so it’s nice to see No Blues resurface.
The first song on the album is For Flotsam, and since this song’s first release in 2013 it has become a setlist staple. The remaster got an extra verse, and the backing track sounds vaguely choir-like, setting the tone of the last original verse about baptizing God in sickness. I can see why this would be a good song to play for a large crowd as it has a good beat, memorable and predictable patterns, and good lyrics, even though Los Campesinos! is very particular about their lyric choices.
Track two, What Death Leaves Behind, was originally released on the band’s Soundcloud as the lead single for the album. This song is a freaky sort of love song, as Gareth, the band’s lead singer, tells someone that if they’re the casket door slamming closed on him, he’s the plague cross painted on their body. It sounds like the mourning of the death of a lover, because he says “What death leaves behind: me.” He was left behind after his lover died. It’s a good second track and definitely keeps the listener hooked after the first track.
Every track Los Camp! has on this album does sound vaguely similar, and the third track, The Portrait of the Trequartista as a Young Man does not stray from this pattern. A trequartista is a position in American soccer, English football, who tend to linger in the striker position between the offense and the midfield, and in Italian football, is often considered the smartest player on the field. It isn’t used in a soccer context though, and is used as a reference to the position the lead singer used to play before joining the band. This song sounds like an ode to a crime of passion, especially with everything the singer describes wanting to do to this poor man he’s killed, which could be another suitor to his lover. As Gareth sings the ode of the crime to his lover of this grand gesture, he demeans himself by saying that they are “snoring” as he tells the story. The title of this song is also a play on the semi-autobiographical album published by James Joyce, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
There aren’t any added lyrics to track four, Cemetery Gaits, but it’s a formidable song even without them. This song is about two lovers spending a drunk night together, totally in tune with the other. The lyric “only twenty-four feet apart/more stories tightrope on that stare than the same white line at Meurig Park” is a reference to the writing of this album, written at Meurig Park’s soccer field while the home team was temporarily disbanded. The title is a jab at “Cemetary Gates” by the Smiths; Gareth remarked he just couldn’t resist poking at the lead singer.
Track five, Glue Me, is a vaguely depressing song about a couple fighting and the man completely folding in on himself, saying “I requested a room with a view/in between a war with me and you.” At the end of the song, a crowd demands for the “ex-boyfriend” to give them a song, which is presumably where Glue Me as a song fits in with the story, as it is the story of the ex-boyfriend. The official Youtube audio is just a loop of a hotdog in a pink jar, and then three hotdogs with one wrapped in pink cellophane. Weird choice.
As Lucerne / The Low, track six, changes up the vibes. It has a long intro with just a single guitar, and the very first line brings up themes that appear before and after this album; crushing and all-consuming loneliness, but he’s proud of it. Another popular song from Los Camp! also brings this up, Straight in at 101, being the most miserable lyricist around and being proud of it. One of the lyrics, “My prose is purple/but not as pretty as Lucerne,” is the inspiration for the title of the song, talking about how his prose for writing lyrics is good enough, but it’s not as pretty as the Lucerne flower, which happens to be purple.
Avocado, Baby, is by far the strangest title on this album at track seven, but it’s enjoyable and makes sense once you listen to the song. The singer is talking about how his skin is tough and he has a heart of stone like an avocado, baby. It’s title was taken from a children’s book, but honestly, I don’t have much to say about this song.
But I do have some things to say about the eighth track, Let it Spill. I would love to hear this performed in concert with how many opportunities it has for opt-ups and guitar riffs. The song is about a man being overwhelmed with the love in his body, and when he meets someone, he’d let it spill into them. The original chorus was extended by a few lines as well as a second repeat chorus added after the second verse. I loved how easy this was to digest and it’s honestly very danceable.
Second, to last on the album, the ninth track The Time Before the Last Time, is even better than the last. It opens with a kind of gritty sound and then comes in with an incredibly identifiable guitar and keyboard mix; almost like the instrumental of a montage backing track. The first few lyrics are echoey and kind of drawn-out, calling back to the church choir sound in the background of For Flotsam. It’s short and sweet, but it carries over into the final track. The singer is thinking about a former lover, even though he’s with someone new, and as he sits down at dinner he thought that they agreed the time before the last time, which was supposed to be this time, that they were over.
Finally, we arrive at the tenth and final track on this remaster, Selling Rope (Swan Dive to Estuary). Just like the track before it, Selling Rope opens without any words, just a hollow-sounding guitar noise and vaguely angelic sounds before a kickdrum starts to beat and the real guitar kicks in. The lyrics behind this song are definitely depressing, especially because they’re about a guy jumping into an estuary to end his own life. He sings about the birds not even noticing as he jumps in and breaks the surface, ignoring his wallet and keys floating on the surface amongst the seaweed. No cars stop, and he says that all he left in this world was a drop. This is my favorite on the album. Full stop, no debate. Selling Rope connects to its audience in a horrible sort of way and I love it to pieces, and if this was played as an encore, I’d be on the sticky concert floor in tears.
Overall, Los Campesinos! hit another home run with their newest remaster, and it can only be new music from here, unless they are planning on remastering Sick Scenes or Whole Damn Body, which I would love to see. A vinyl is available for pre-order but will be available worldwide on December 8th. Los Campesinos! is also touring at two spots in the UK if anyone has an extra several hundred dollars to drop on seeing them play live. They lovingly refer to themselves as your “ex-girlfriend’s favorite band,” you should call and ask her. This band has inspired many other favorites like Lovejoy, a British indie rock band, and will continue to defy the twee-pop label put on them coming straight out of Wales (even though none of them are Welsh.)
