Esplanade Presents: Los Campesinos!

Formed in 2006 in Cardiff, Wales, Los Campesinos! played their first gig in May that year at a student union club night. They went on to play increasingly well-received gigs around Cardiff with their infectious song You! Me! Dancing! quickly becoming a live favourite, and a few months later they found themselves supporting Canadian supergroup Broken Social Scene.

Displaying a compelling combination of frenetic exuberance and smarty-pants lyrics, the indie pop group released their debut album Hold On Now, Youngster and its follow-up We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed within months of each other in 2008. Next came the darker and musically expansive Romance Is Boring in 2009 and two years later, Hello Sadness was released.

A lot can happen in the course of two years. If Romance Is Boring marked a giant step on from their genesis—seven kids and a glockenspiel, ricocheting off the four walls of a Cardiff rehearsal room—Hello Sadness constitutes another step, and a turn of the corner. The core Los Campesinos! concerns are still there—love, loss, heartbreak, football (always football)—but this is an album that is wiser and more focused than its predecessors, confident in its abilities and clear in its aims.

As vocalist and lyricist Gareth Campesinos! explains: “Hello Sadness marks another chapter ... The youngsters that made You! Me! Dancing! are long gone. The band they’ve grown into, though, are something to fall for all over again”.

(1hr, no intermission)

17 Mar 2012, Sat, 7.30 & 10pm

$40, $48*
(*For ticket purchased on day of performance)