Every Los Campesinos! Album Ranked
The Cardiff band's seven albums, in order from good to great.
Photo by Martyna Bannister
Los Campesinos! have never made a bad album. From the ‘00s twee stylings (that they rejected just as quickly as it helped put the UK group on the map), to their quirky spin on fourth-wave emo that was both darker and dancier than most of their American counterparts in the same movement, to their graduation to the level of elder statesmen of anthemic, personal-political pop punk, Los Campesinos are a band who’ve maintained a distinctive musical identity throughout each stage of their creative evolution. They’ve consistently been on the fringes of various musical and subcultural trends, influencing peers and successors across subgenres while never fully ingratiating themselves into any particular scene. Instead, their priority has always been embracing their own idiosyncrasies and making the records that they want to hear, and it’s served them well so far. This is a band that has remained steadfast in their commitment to playing to their strengths—strengths that become more and more apparent with each Los Campesinos! release.
Of course, not all Los Campesinos! albums are created equal, though more importantly, every Los Campesinos! album sounds like a Los Campesinos! album. Almost two decades into their career and having gone through several lineup changes, they’re just two days away from releasing their seventh album and their first in seven years. In honor and anticipation of the forthcoming All Hell, here’s one fan’s extremely subjective ranking of every Los Campesinos! record from “worst” to best.
7. Hold On Now, Youngster (2008)
One album had to be ranked last, okay? Los Campesinos! feel like one of those cases where the song or album that’s most associated with a band’s whole oeuvre is—at least to those “in the know”—not necessarily representative of their output as a whole. Their debut put the big twee target on LC!’s backs, and it wasn’t even six months before they started trying to shake it off. Of all LC! albums, Hold On Now, Youngster feels the most dated—the tinkering instrumental arrangements, the sentence-long song titles, the references to fairy lights and dirty little mash notes scrawled on personalized stationery—but there’s an argument to be made for the importance of a record that’s inextricable from the aesthetics of its time, particularly it’s art that’s executing such aesthetic choices in a way far more artful than most of the artist’s peers. If Los Campesinos! had to be reluctant twee poster children, they played their role pretty damn well.
Essential Tracks
“You! Me! Dancing”: This was the first LC! song I ever heard—it’s most people’s first LC! Song. It’s the obvious pick, but for good reason. May it encourage socially awkward teenagers to bust a move for years to come.
“My Year in Lists”: It’s up there with Death Cab For Cutie, the Mountain Goats and the Dismemberment Plan in the indie rock New Year’s canon, and few parentheses in history have been quite as load-bearing as the ones sandwiching the word “before” in this diabolical chorus.
“Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks”: The instruments dropping out one by one until it’s just violin and gang vocals at the outro retroactively feels like a sneak peek of the group’s seamless pivot to pop punk.
6. Sick Scenes (2017)
There was one unbearably hot summer (I say this as if it doesn’t describe all of them) where I worked a fancy internship that I knew would look good on my resume but regularly reminded me just how much I had no fucking clue what I was doing—at this job and in general. Every day I donned my best business casual and sweated through it on the subway. If I could make it until the ride home from work till my first Sick Scenes listen, I considered it a good day. If I didn’t have to pause it to hop off the train and retch into a subway platform trash can from a combination of motion sickness, all-consuming anxiety, and a diet of binging or starving (depending on the day), even better. This record is more slow-moving and reserved than previous ones, which made it one that I struggled to connect with when it first came out. But on the days that made my head spin and my flesh nearly melt off my bones, I needed it badly.
Essential Tracks
“Renato Dall’Ara (2008)”: A song that kicks off the record by picking up not necessarily where the band left off, but where they began; the abstract of a decade-old band in three minutes.
“I Broke Up in Amarante”: This song has one of the catchiest choruses in LC!’s discography (no small feat)—and one that reflects their characteristic juxtaposition of purple-to-plainspoken prose seamlessly.
“5 Flucloxacillin”: The more I listen to this ode to medication and late-stage installment in the Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown series, the more it feels like the band dipping a toe back into their abandoned twee tendencies, especially at the twinkly chorus, and it’s an instance in which a backpedal is actually a step in the right direction.
5. NO BLUES (2013)
Gareth has said that Los Campesinos! shows sometimes feel like sporting events. They’re an easy band to root for, and one that knows how to incite the kind of rowdy, red-cheeked, arms-tossed-over shoulders camaraderie that you’d find at a sports bar on game day. Recognizing the opening notes of a deep cut during their concerts feels like watching them score a goal. NO BLUES isn’t a concept album about UK football, it’s one that amps up the already-frequent football references, and it isn’t even really “about” them. Rather, the game is a conduit for emotional action and reaction. Every moment thrums with make-or-break potential energy, showcasing a band at their most precarious and most hopeful. Each win and—a more common songwriting subject—each loss, is a collective public spectacle, their sound expanding to stadium size.