SOUNDTRACK: LOS CAMPESINOS!-Romance is Boring (2009).
Even though I had heard good things about Los Campesinos! before I got this album, this was the first one I bought. I see that it gets less high marks than previous discs but I think it is fantastic. It is frantic and catchy, it is intense and mellow, it is loud and soft and most of the time that’s in the same song. And, as you’ll see below, lyrically I think it’s fantastic.
The disc begins slowly. Then the vocals come in and you can tell that Gareth Campesinos!’ voice is somewhat abrasive, but well enunciated. When at the 2 minute mark the song more or less stops and turns into little twinkling bells you’re not prepared for the next bit–the guitars are noisy and the drums are loud and the lyrics are even stranger (sung in a slightly off-key style): “I’m leaving my body to science, not medical but physics.” By the end, the song has mellowed almost completely and we have an almost a capella ending, “Would this interest you at all?” But before you have a chance to answer that, the next song, “There are Listed Building” ratchets forth in both speakers with loud and quiet sections, group vocals and the lead singer’s more shouting style.
“Romance is Boring” has some super catchy shouted vocals as well as the first real exposure to the co-vocalist Aleksandra Campesinos!’ beautiful gentle female voice. “We’ve Got Your Back” is primarily sung by the female vocalist until the male voice come back with “and so fucking on and so fucking forth” and my favorite shouted chorus: “What would you do? I do not know.” “(PLAN A)” is a screaming punk blast of discord. Until, of course, the much more palatable group sung chorus kicks in.
One of the best songs they do is “Straight in at 101” a wonderful song about breakups that is catchy and funny. It opens with, “I think we need more post-coital and less post rock.” And then after some great alt rock, the song comes to an end with an a capella section that is quietly sung:
I phone my friends and family to gather round the television;
The talking heads count down the most heart-wrenching break ups of all time
Imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity, the embarrassment
When not a single one of that whole century was… mine
“I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me” has frenetic guitar and the wonderful line, “if this changed your life, did you have one before?” And the wonderfully titled “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show-Me State” opens with this lyrical stanza:
She’d a bruise so black they watched it fade through the full spectrum of colours.
They kept it like a pet; a private joke they told no others.
And how the tissue repaired, and how it turned to yellow
And she found it disgusting, ’cause it didn’t match her clothing.
He said “that’s not yellow, it’s golden”.
Also lyrically interesting is “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future,” because how can you make this couplet work in a rhythmic way. But he does! “At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation from allergic reaction to a general anesthetic.”
There are fast songs and slow songs and pretty sections and harsh sections. I think they meld it all together wonderfully.
[READ: February 6, 2012] “Los Gigantes”
I think I begin every T. Coraghessan Boyle story with some trepidation. I liked Boyle because of The Road to Wellville, but I find that most of his other stories are very Southwestern, a region I really don’t know very well. And yet for all my trepidation, I find I do enjoy his stories.
This one has a very simple premise. All of the largest men in the area have been offered jobs by the President (I’m not sure where this is set but I assume, if it’s not entirely fictional, that it’s meant to be in Central America). Although the men have some freedom during the day, at night they are locked into cages. But their job is a simple one–eat, sleep and have sex with very large women. That’s all. It’s kind of boring, but they are provided entertainments. And it could certainly be worse (wait until you see what conditions the women love in!).
Discontentment begins to settle in as they realize that they are little more than stud animals (the President is breeding them for their size for a secret army in several generations). And so one night two of los gigantes escape (it’s fairly easy, they are very strong men). But they basically get as far as town where the pleasures of the town’s bar keep them from returning home. They are caught and punished, but the punishment is not that bad because the President really wants their offspring.
The men issue demands–a nicer living situation mostly–which are met, and they are contented once more.
The main reason why the narrator of the story is unhappy is because he has a girlfriend back home. She is petite, very petite (he is six foot ten and over 400 pounds and she is under five feet tall and thin). He feels bad for all of the procreating that he is doing, but she (and his family) are being paid handsomely for it. It’s only when he discovers that the President is also planning to breed tiny people as spies that he begins to worry. What if his beloved Rosita volunteers to become a baby factory for the President?
And so the narrator makes another attempted escape.
This story was fine. It held my interest certainly, but I expected more from it. Some kind of…something. I mean, it’s little more than a man has sex with ton of women but when he thinks his woman is doing the same he gets angry and goes to stop her (in fairness, she’s not, so it’s not THAT kind of story, at least). The sexism is rampant in the culture and it feels very retrograde. However, I did like the very last little section, as it brought some thoughtfulness to the story.
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