Los Campesinos! have already delivered one of my album’s of 2008…and it looks like they could deliver two! The Welsh group plan to release their sophomore effort — We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed — via Wichita on October the 13th in the UK.
Hold On Now, Youngster! was only released on February the 13th. So we’re talking sub-Arctic Monkeys or even Kings of Leon speeds here and the band have declared it’s no post album B-side cash in:
“”It’s no B-Sides and rarities or ’songs that weren’t good enough to be on the album cobbled together with some remixes and field recordings of Cardiff’s indie scene’; it’s 10 all-new tracks that none of you have ever heard before.
“Sure, we considered re-releasing a radio-edit of ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ and trying to get famous and scraping another tour out of that, but our parents unanimously agreed that if we did they would never speak to us again.”
The band also released the tracklisting for the album which is as follows.
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed:
01 Ways to Make It Through the Wall
02 Miserabilia
03 We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
04 Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky
05 You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing
06 It’s Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt)
07 The End of the Asterisk
08 Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1
09 Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time
10 All Your Kayfabe Friends
Great news! Hold on now… is one of 2008’s best and the band are an exciting and, thankfully, fresh sounding voice in the ever more crowded ‘Indie’ scene. Let’s just hope the album doesn’t suffer from it’s presumably short creation time and that it gives the Cardiff boys and girls two places on my end of year lists.
MP3: Los Campesinos! – Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(S)
Categories: Music
Tagged: Hold on now youngster, Kings of Leon, Los Campesinos!, We Are Beautiful We are Doomed, You! Me! Dancing!
I rarely, if ever, blog about non-music stuff. But I’m happy to make an exception for this. I’ve been home for almost 4 hours now and I’m just in a sort of trance, not really wanting to do anything; just thinking about this movie.
And what a movie! So rare to see a Summer blockbuster with so much to say and so many ideas. I’m by no means a comic or even a Batman fan but this was utterly fascinating. I always suspected that the plaudits for Heath Ledgers performance as The Joker was party down to some post death fawning, but he truly is utterly fantastic and charismatic as Batman’s archnemisis.
He dominates whatever scene he is in, when he’s not on screen you’re pining for him to return, almost begging that certain scenes were longer just so you could bask in his masterclass performance for a little while longer.
The clash of pragmatism and idealism and chaos vs order is crafted well and makes some suprisingly relevant comments on the post 9/11 world for a ‘mere’ blockbuster. The question of how far do you go to stop an evil that cannot be reasoned with provides an interesting insight into contemporary issues and – without providing spoilers – makes some intelligent comments on the problem with the unravelling of certain characters.
Anyway, it’s the biggest movie in the world at the moment and it’s been out for more than week so I won’t bother with a more indepth review. But if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for!?
Here are some (vaguely) relevant songs to celebrate an outstanding performance by Heath Ledger and the inner Joker in all of us!
MP3: Radiohead – Climbing up the Walls
MP3: Wolfmother – Joker & The Thief
Categories: Film
Tagged: Batman, Climbing up the walls, Heath Ledger, Joker & the thief, Radiohead, The Dark Knight, The Joker, Wolfmother
