Los Campesinos!:
We are Beautiful, We are Doomed

Another round from Cardiff's finest.

For a band singularly possessed by a ramshackle and manic pop sensibility, Los Campesinos! finds plenty of opportunity on We are Beautiful, We are Doomed to add fresh coats of paint to their idiosyncratic sound. There are handclaps and fist pumps aplenty, and more than one track makes good use of the familiar violin and guitar point-counterpoint before resolving into seismic breakdowns and bon mots, such as this one, from the album's title track: “We kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking / but there is no fucking future."

Amid all that maturation, there’s still plenty of fodder for the LiveJournal-and-lamentation crowd; the record opens with frontman Gareth musing “I think it’s fair to say that I chose hopelessness / and inflicted it on the rest of us.” Lest anyone think they’ve drifted too far from the moorings of heartbreak and isolation, We are Beautiful frequently turns inward to ponder break-ups by phone, hating your parents, and 4 a.m. drunken confessionals. At just over a half hour long, it's more EP than album, but even these (ostensible) B-sides make for a giddy and infectious sprint.

Listen to Los Campesinos!' "We are Beautiful, We are Doomed" from We are Beautiful, We are Doomed: