Los Campesinos! Prep New LP for Nov.

Third time should be the charm with producer John Goodmanson.

By Blurt Staff

Arts & Crafts will release Cardiff, Wales, band Los Campesinos! New album Hello Sadness on November 15^th.  Recorded earlier this year in Girona, Spain by producer John Goodmanson - responsible for the septet's previous two albums, 2008's We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and 2010's Romance is Boring - Hello Sadness features "ten songs of love, loss and heartbreak... an honest, bare-bones documentation of two people breaking up and trying not to break up in the process."

Depending on how you grab the record (it's already up for pre-order at the band's site) you can also be the proud recipient of a limited edition DVD containing a documentary on the band and a bonus CD called Hold On Now, Youngster... The Demos featuring never before heard demos from the first L.C. album.

The band: Gareth Campesinos! (vocals), Tom Campesinos! (guitar), Neil Campesinos! (guitar), Kim Campesinos! (keyboard/vocals), Jason Campesinos! (drums), Rob Campesinos! (keyboard/guitar) and Ellen Campesinos! (bass).

Here's what the label has to day about the record. Track listing follows.

Ever present are the wry observations, the razor-sharp wordplay and the band's varied instrumentation, combined with some of the saddest, world-weary confessionals Los Campesinos! have ever recorded. Indeed, Hello Sadness is wise beyond its years, exhibited not only in the sincerity, poetry and honesty of its lyrical content, but by the instrumental dynamics of its songs: a band that previously all put their foot on the accelerator pedal at once, a key element of their high octane sound, have learned how to take turns and let each other drive. Yes, things are still loud and upbeat. Yes, lead vocalist Gareth Campesinos! still tells it like it is. Yes, theirs is still the perfect middle ground between punk rock, indie pop, Morrissey and The Fall's Mark E. Smith. But each instrument has a settled place; each song sounds incredibly confident in its aim and abilities. The result is a band that has never sounded more together while detailing the impact of a relationship falling apart.

At just ten songs and forty minutes, Hello Sadness is perhaps the first Los Campesinos! album that sounds lean and pruned, indulgence shorn away and filler ruthlessly excised.  Opener "By Your Hand" envisions death at the hand of a lover - a perfect tune for setting the album's tone and theme into place - while songs like "Baby I Got The Death Rattle" and "Light Leaves, Dark Sees Pt. II" come from a raw, uncertain place that, in their confusion of emotions, feels more authentic than previous Los Campesinos! recordings.  This is bolstered by the band's own voices - singing together at least once one every song - as a unified message of hope, dismay and need.  It's a confessional feel that's intensified in places by whispers of incidental sound - the rattle of rain, distant radio, the hiss of room microphones - and snatches of Dictaphone, captured by Gareth in a lonely or introspective moment.  It's an album whose very purpose and complexion changed dramatically when, on the eve of recording, the end of a relationship meant every word that had been penned before had to be rewritten.  More heart-on-sleeve than ever before, Hello Sadness is Los Campesinos! at their very best.

Tracklisting:

By Your Hand

Songs About Your Girlfriend

Hello Sadness

Life Is A Long Time

Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions)

Hate For The Island

The Black Bird, The Dark Slope

To Tundra

Baby I Got The Death Rattle

Light Leaves, Dark Sees Pt. II

[Photo Credit: Jon Bergman]