Hall of Fame Looking back on Los Campesinos!’ ‘Romance Is Boring’

Scrappy and sweaty, Los Campesinos!’s debut album ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ was a gluey, rough-edged scrapbook of a band with equal penchant for both sneering social commentary and niche punctuation use. It wasn’t until four years later, though, that the Welsh-but-not-actually-from-Wales rabble proved exactly what they could spin out of their smart-arsery.

‘Romance Is Boring’, the band’s second full-length (don’t mention ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’, okay – it still doesn’t count), found Los Campesinos! tightening the rusty screws of that debut. Every element perfected – if not polished – it remains the perfect introduction to their idiosyncratic take on the indie-pop template.

Bounding along like a dog on the trail of a string of sausages, ‘Romance Is Boring’ is as breathless as they come. Top of the list of panting persons, though, is surely frontman Gareth Campesinos!, who leads the charge with his thousand-word-a-minute, feet-on-the-ground lyricism. “Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back,” he pleads on ‘I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know’ - find us another chorus that combines such physical intimacy with the pragmatism of keeping an eye on potentially cancerous skin growths and we’ll buy you a pint.

Throughout it all, though, there’s a sense of exuberance and relief – of casting off the shitty side of day-to-day drama with a good old-fashioned piss-up and a dance. The tongue-twisting ‘A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte’ finds that indie carnival reach its peak, a blast of horns framing Los Camp! at their most party-starting.