Buzz-makers Los Campesinos! once rocked the book smarts out of a library, a rare live opportunity that suits the band perfectly.
With dense lyricism packing myriad pop culture references and snarky bits of indie hipster criticism, it’s clear that the indie rock septet has brains to spare. Yet its recently released full-length debut, “Hold On Now, Youngster … ,” bursts with a manic energy that gives listeners permission to ignore the words and just dance their pants off.
The group, whose name means “The Farmers” or “The Peasants” in Spanish, has been on the go constantly since winning praise for the 2007 EP “Sticking Fingers Into Sockets.” Los Campesinos! also works to earn its ironic exclamation point. Says singer-glockenspielist Gareth Campesinos (not his real last name), 22, “I think an exclamation mark is to represent excitement and volume and exuberance, and I think we’re quite entitled to use one for those reasons.”
From his mom’s house in England, Gareth addressed indie cliches, onstage drunkeness and the art of the glockenspiel.
What’s more fun: playing glockenspiel or saying glockenspiel?
Yeah, glockenspiel is a good word to say, actually. If you say it in the most German way possible, then it makes it particularly entertaining. … And I think using the word “playing” is a particularly grand description of what I actually do with a glockenspiel. I would describe it more as disciplining a glockenspiel. Just the way I seem to hit it randomly and with no actual pleasurable tune coming from it.
Disciplining? As in, teaching it a lesson?
Sometimes if I become a bit aware of what I’m doing, I realize I actually hit the correct note about 17 percent of the time. The rest of the time it’s just banging the plastic stick against the metal with no real accuracy. If … we cross paths with some orchestra on the festival circuit and they see the way that I treat a glockenspiel, they’ll be disgusted.
You seem bothered by indie cliches. Do any apply to you?
I think I’m very much guilty of indie snobbery. Bands that I like that aren’t very well known, I kind of like to keep [them] as my special secret. It’s not a particularly nice cliche, but I think I carry it off with a certain charm.
If your shows are so exhausting to you, what training do fans need to do to prepare for them?
I think they need to appreciate what our motivations are going into a gig. I used to look at clips that people posted of us [on YouTube] playing live. There was a clip of us playing in New York and somebody commented, “They can’t even play their own songs!” When we play live, the primary thing we want to achieve is that we enjoy it ourselves, and often we will be a bit too drunk when we go on or we will get a bit too drunk as the set continues.
People will understand the exclamation point, but the name may be spelled wrong as a result of drunken sloppiness.
And quite often the posters advertising the gig at the venue the name actually will be spelled incorrectly. I guess one thing about having a slightly unusual name is that we are often subject to mispronunciations or misspellings.
If the name is spelled wrong, it’s your duty to have a sloppy show.
Yes, that is my defense from now on. Thank you. [Laughs] I’m taking along my own misspelled posters to put up on the wall.
Yet you’ve expressed distaste for British bands who are all about getting drunk and fighting. How is your drunken sloppiness different?
I think our drunkenness is very much a playful drunkenness and primarily excitement that when we get to a venue there’s a fridge with beer in it and there’s some whiskey on the side that we don’t have to pay for. I mean, we’re all only just finishing university so we’re used to being students and getting anything for free that we can.
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MPAIS@TRIBUNE.COM
