Los Campesinos! are beautiful and doomed, but not tired

By Alex Young on August 7th, 2008

After a year that saw them release their first full-length effort, Hold on Now, Youngster…, tour the world, and even earn the honor of being one of Consequence of Sound’s mid-year top 10, Los Campesinos! have certainly earned some time off. Only the seven-piece outfit from Cardiff, Wales doesn’t seem all receptive to the idea, well that is, unless you consider creating a brand new album a break.

Upon the conclusion of the bands extensive North American tour this past spring, Los Campesinos! remained on America’s West Coast, in a Seattle studio with producer John Goodmanson (Sleater-Kinney/Blonde Redhead/Bikini Kill) for a two week recording session and returned to Wales to mix at Monnow Valley. From these inspired sessions comes another blast of emphatic, exhilarating pop songs.

The result is We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, a 10-track effort set for release on November 11 (October 13 for our friends in the U.K.) via Arts & Crafts. And just in case you were wondering, the sophomore effort is all 100% new, “it’s 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, scrape another tour out of that, but our parents unanimously agreed that if we did they would never speak to us again.”

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed Tracklist:
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