Over 200 Bands Announced for SXSW 2010, Including (Ready For a Plug?) a Few We’ve Recently Written About: Aa, Harlem, Small Black… [Gorilla v. Bear]
Javelin Offers to Customize Your Record Jacket. Dunno If I Should Send Them a Classic, or Just Hope That They Get All Blingee With One Of These [Pitchfork]
Haven’t Gotten Enough of The Soft Pack Lately? Look On “The Bright Side,” (nudge, nudge) They’re Releasing a New Album in 2010. [Tiny Mix Tapes]
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Watch Neil Young Cover “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” [The Daily Swarm]
And in Competition for Best Video of The Day, Watch The Muppets do “Bohemian Rhapsody.” [Idolator]
Watch New Buckshot and KRS-One Video. (“Survival Skills” No Longer Needed on Streets of Brooklyn, Taken to Video Game Land Instead) [Prefix]
Spoon To Release Upcoming Album, Transferance, Early. Can’t Wait Till January 19? Their First Single to be Released December 1 [The Tripwire]
Los Campesinos! Cut Selves Shaving, Reveal Cover Art for New LP. (We Love It When They Get All Poignant and Disturbing) [Pitchfork]
compiled by Erin Sheehy
September 11, 2009
Los Campesinos! | “The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future”
ART OF SONG
Los Campesinos!
“The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future”
2009 | Unreleased
photo by Grace deVille
I have figured it out. Los Campesinos! are unable to write a simple pop song. Nothing about hand holding, or kissing under bleachers, unless it involves getting drunk and vomiting afterwards and then having everything ruined forever. Indeed, the newest track from the Welsh indie band tackles eating disorders, dying on the operating table, and planned suicide…and that’s just in the first verse.
“The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future” starts off solemnly, and continues, like a bullet train, down that vein. Beginning low and slow, the strings start to slide in as the tempo increases every-so-slightly. Lead singer Gareth Campesinos! comes in over a drum beat accent, repeating the line “she’s not eating again” with a resigned air, as if this is just a simple fact and there is nothing he can do about it.
He continues weaving his words, composing the story of the tragic heroine with lines that would sound ridiculous and stilted coming from anyone else. Lines like “I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate/ I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant” and “At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation/ from allergic reaction to a general anesthetic/ Spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions/ in a futile attempt to know more than the doctors,” paint a heartwrenching and complex picture. Gareth is a songwriter before he is a musician, and the attention to detail in his lyrics is painstaking and astounding.
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compiled by Elana Jacobs
