So this is how the affair ends, is it? Such a shame. Los Campesinos!, a Welsh septet known for their chaotic-yet-controlled ruminations on failed romance (and their frenetic recording; their two previous albums were released within eight months of each other) are the musical equivalent to The One That Got Away. Fans of previous effort We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed may have expected a bit of the same with the new album, albeit with perhaps the precision of an evolving act. They would be sorely disappointed.
I suppose it’s evident in the title! Romance Is Boring. Doesn’t exactly carry the same raised-eyebrow weight of Doomed, does it? Instead it comes off as a reduction of all the ills that plague Los Campesinos! as they enter this new stage of their career: a disaffection with any aspect of life beyond the most cynical self-hatred, an exultation of giving up on any semblance of happiness or excitement and, most of all, a total lack of interest in seducing listeners with the awesome power of seven musicians who can really tear shit up when they want to. It’s a sad, unpalatable boiling-down of Los Campesinos’ brief history. Being in love with life, or music, is shit. So why bother?
Doomed and 2008’s Hold On Now, Youngster… presented a fresh take on a formula as old as Cap’n Jazz; a rambling wreck of guitars, strings and keys clattering in a brilliant unison under the vocals of Gareth’s almost spoken-word soliloquies. It was a cacophony of indie instrumentation but oddly beautiful. If anything, the band knew the beauty of moderation, be it with a full-band chorus of vocals to emphasize the wrenching pain of a certain verse or string-breaking guitar strumming sliding effortlessly into virtuoso fingering when a song verged too close to angst-driven overkill.
Of course Gareth wasn’t the first UK native to pine for a simpler connection between the sexes, but there was something uniquely clever and honest about his lyrics. Here was the lion with kitten’s paws, in love with the idea of romance yet finding nothing in the twenty-first century wasteland of youth culture. He was the smart kid with the kind heart threatening to hurt himself… You realized his emotions were real yet in the end you also knew things would work out for him. Or so you thought.
Instead now we have “Straight In At 101″, a classically Campesinos tune with lyrics as trite as “feels like the build-up takes forever but you never touch my cock”. Perhaps the smart kid with the kind heart hit rock bottom? Not a good look for the boy you thought you knew. Female co-vocalist Aleks (Or is it Gareth’s sister, new-hire Kim? It’s impossible to tell but one of them keeps edging horribly into Riot-Grrl territory) offers this gem on “We’ve Got Your Back”: “I’m sweating off the cheat notes on my thighs; they’re for your benefit not mine”. I don’t know, am I suddenly the grumpy old man on the indie rock block or is this all just puerile nonsense? To boot, we have another bloody reference to “Doe Eyes” (Youngster fans will understand). Could it be a subtle hint to the absolute mediocrity of the effort? Maybe I’m the paranoid old man instead. It’s a real shame because as first single “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future” showed, the band is perfectly capable of keeping the killer music while maturing the lyrical content.
At least these three songs have sustainability. I found myself humming them in the shower and eager to play them back during my commutes and workouts. Understand though that most of Boring is the calamity of Los Campesinos without the flashes of beauty. Noodling guitar lines (heavily distorted) and shouts (not nearly as in unison as with previous recordings) seem thrown in as last resorts. There are no ascensions to glory in these tracks; the first thirty seconds of the song are about as good as it gets. A couple of tunes devolve into teetering monologues over silence, chugging so slowly into anti-climactic ends that you almost want to tell poor Gareth to just shut it.
And so it goes that as this assignment ends, I relegate Boring to a spare 50 MB of my iTunes. Several of the songs will be welcome reminders in future shuffle sessions. None will stay with me like some of Los Campesinos’ previous efforts. It was a nice run… I fell head over heels for them and cooled a bit only to love them more. Upon which we reached a crossroads and there it all became clearer: the self-pity, the blemishes, the repetitive content of our interactions. I made the decision that maybe it’d be better if we just went our separate ways.