Los Campesinos! - There Are Listed Buildings

It’s a cliché to say that a song reveals itself across multiple listens and we’re not going to say it here, because frankly the reverse is true. What at the beginning sounds like a Los Campesinos! song with added brass becomes, after repeated plays, a truly baffling track. Sort of twee-meets-no-wave. It’s noisy, discordant and bloody great.

Yet, it’s still Los Campesinos! and will not enamour the band to those who would dislike the aggravated self-deprecation that Gareth Campesinos! has made his own, and whilst the exact subject matter on ‘There Are Listed Buildings’ is poetically vague it’s still apparent that the girl who is the target of his affections is not interested: “You say I circle you unwanted, like a seagull swoops and feeds from a bin”.

In fact it’s lyrically amidst this musical cacophony that the song shines most, aside from the aforementioned lyric we get the lines “We are but two atheists in lust, you know, we gotta make our own luck” and “I remember being naked to my waist though not in which direction”, both thrown at us with the bands usual emotive franticness.

Coming as a taster for next years album and in time for their tour, at which this track’s on sale (as a 7”), ‘There Are Listed Buildings’ cements Los Campesinos! as one of our truly favourite groups. Consider us at the front of the queue for the next record.