Death To Los Campesinos!-Los Campesinos!

As much as I love a lot of twee music, I also love making fun of it. And there have been few bands that lend themselves to this pastime as well as Welsh septet Los Campesinos! The rub of it is, I think they’re in on the joke, too. Witness.

Murderous kittens, rainbows, unicorns and confetti, a mixed-gender band that appears to have never had sex (even with each other!) and lyrical allusions to feigning roboticism? Wow.

One of the hallmarks of tweecore (and therefore what makes it so endearing to some and infuriating to others) is that it’s such a relatively simplistic form of songcraft that it seems as though every single twee 7″ and/or full-length that comes along could justifiably be said to be the sub-genre’s definitive statement. The irony being that it’s in a state or perpetual stasis; one’s lyrics can only be so literate, and one’s music can only be so hyper-melodic. There’s nothing to really support the idea that ‘Death to Los Campesinos!’ is somehow more or less artistically credible than something released ten (Belle and Sebastian) or twenty years ago (The Field Mice).

That being said…I can’t think of a tweecore band in recent memory that has this much fun.

Graveyard Girl-M83

Ever wondered what a John Hughes film would sound like if set to music twenty years after it was made?

This is it.

I was first exposed to M83 when Gary put ‘Run Into Flowers’ off their first album on a mix CD for me. It was pleasant enough to make it onto the iPod, but nothing completely mind-blowing. And up until now, I’d never had a ton of interest in owning any of their albums, especially because since that mix appearance, several other excellent M83 songs and remixes have come into my possession, courtesy of various other mixes. So I figured “Why buy the cow when I can get the (best of the) milk for free?” My friends were doing all the leg-work for me.

Now here I am, seriously considering snapping up all three M83 full-lengths, including just-released Saturdays=Youth. It’s kind of stupefying how ridiculously catchy and joy-inducing new single ‘Graveyard Girl’ is. A sublime synthesis of shoegaze distortion and new wave tunefulness, featuring an up-front, jangly guitar sound that may have been what I was missing from M83’s other work. And thematically, you can’t get much further up my alley than a song about a mopey-but-cute pseudo-goth chick vainly wishing the captain of the basketball team will notice her (Pink Candle Breakfast Club anyone?)