Photos by Jon Bergman
In the middle of a Brooklyn gig last November, Los Campesinos! leader Gareth took a moment to thank the very-psyched audience for their enthusiasm. But this wasn't some "hello Cleveland!" bullshit-- he was genuinely and visibly grateful, and a little surprised. Even though this UK group released their debut EP just five years ago, they've become quick indie rock mainstays thanks to four rich and consistent albums, including the recent Hello Sadness. In our click-click-delete world, any sort of continued relevance is a rare and coveted thing. Gareth knows this, and that's probably part of why he still gets a rush out of people screaming, bursting, and clapping along with his band's songs.
We meet in a quiet room backstage before the show; I take the couch, he takes a glorified folding chair. The casual 26 year old is sporting some weathered bedhead as he gamely muses on everything from the power of Drake to the peace of graveyards. A big part of Los Campesinos! appeal is the one-of-us factor-- with their clever, complex, and candid songs about heartbreak and twentysomething confusion, it's not a huge stretch for fans to think they could easily pal around with the group, especially Gareth. And, during our conversation, he certainly lives up to that rep, always equipped with a self-deprecating remark or an inquisitive follow-up. Talking about personally packing a recent shipment of the band's fanzine Heat Rash, he says, "It's the sort of thing we could pay someone else to do, but I wouldn't have been doing anything better in those four days anyway."
Los Campesinos! embody the homemade 90s indie aesthetic but also aren't afraid to adapt to today's DIY culture, where a placement in a beer ad is all but necessary to keep a seven-piece group thriving and building. It's a tricky balance, but Gareth and his band mates still look like they're having a hell of a time trying to figure it all out. We spoke about ex-girlfriends, blissfully cold suds, and the trappings of Tumblr.
Pitchfork: You wrote a piece for our 15th anniversary feature last year and mentioned that you were going through a break up and hoped making Hello Sadness would put you in a better headspace. Did that work out?
Gareth Campesinos!: The good thing about an album coming out is that it provides distractions, and you stop stewing on your personal life. But I think I'm perpetually going to be in that wounded, or faux-wounded, position-- though I'm probably better now than at the time of the breakup. I've reconciled myself to just being honest. It suits the band. And that level of transparency helps stuff get sorted out. It's also a good way of getting messages to specific people without having to speak directly to them, which is probably terrible. Though I sent the album to the girl it's written about, and she's been very understanding. She actually said how much she likes it, so that's good.
Pitchfork: People must know what they're getting into when they start a relationship with a singer nowadays.
GC: Yeah. [laughs] It's weird because since the band started, I've found myself in a couple of situations where someone's aware of how I write, and there's the worry of: "Are you going to write a song about me?" But there are also situations where somebody's excited at the prospect-- and that's not any kind of motivation I want to know about.
Pitchfork: Seems like a warning sign.
GC: Yeah. And to be honest, if you're trying to achieve any level of fame by getting involved with me, that's just a terrible idea.
Watch the video for "By Your Hand" from Hello Sadness:
Pitchfork: This is your fourth album-- do you think it's gotten to the point where you've got your loyal fans and that's it?
GC: I don't think we want to settle for that, and we can't always rely on the people that like us currently to like us indefinitely. We want to do this for as long as people will allow us to do it. But you can't really do anything forever, I suppose.
There are so many people who wish we'd make another Hold on Now, Youngster..., but I find it so ridiculous because that would be lying and anathema to what we do as a band. We're a lot more aspirational than the way we behave a lot of the time would suggest. Like, doing something like a fanzine isn't exactly a forward-thinking idea, but we've had experiences of playing big shows with the Cribs in the UK, and Lollapalooza. It's incredible playing to loads of people. We love it. I think we're actually very good at it, but nobody else seems to agree. [laughs] I can still appreciate that there's a lot about the band that would make us difficult to get into, but that's not to say we don't want to strive to play to more people. We did a Budweiser ad for fuck's sake! What else are we supposed to do? [laughs]
Pitchfork: You make fun of that ad a lot, but putting music in commercials is a legitimate modern indie dilemma.
GC: There comes a time when people have to accept if they're going to illegally download music, then bands are going to have to make money elsewhere. We were actually offered a larger sum of money for "You! Me! Dancing" from Southern Comfort just after it was released, and we turned it down. I still think we were right to, because at that stage of our career people would have just wanted to hear that version of the song over and over. But when it came back up it was just the easiest decision to make because that money is now enabling us to be a band for another two years. And the response has been overtly positive, I think because we've not shied away from it like a lot of bands probably would.
We played this gig in St. Louis, which is where Budweiser's based, and two guys from their promotional team came to watch the gig and they brought up 12 bottles of Budweiser. It was the coldest beer. At the time we were selling these bootleg Budweiser t-shirts, and they were like, "We saw those shirts." I'm thinking they're going to ask us to give all the money back from the commercial right then. But they're like, "We love them, can we get some?"
Where I'm from, people know I'm in a band but they basically think I'm a waster. But after that ad was on the telly, people at the pub were like, "Oh, that's him." I'm actually really proud to have that song on there.
Pitchfork: I don't want to be rude, but I'm always curious how much bands make from those placements.
GC: It's a substantial figure. And the ad itself has been really successful and has won awards. They did all these different versions and kept being like, "We want to run it for another eight months, can we give you more money?"
Sadly, as individuals, we haven't seen a penny yet. Apparently, the nature of publishing money being paid back is slow, so we have to wait another 18 months before we actually realize where we stand. We've been able to buy some new equipment as a band, but it's not like, "Here's a check for a thousand bucks, now go out and buy Rolexes." So the fact that we may have sold out but are still very poor at the moment always makes me feel more comfortable.
Pitchfork: There was an interesting point brought up in our review of Hello Sadness about how Los Campesinos! are really engaging with listeners musically and lyrically in a direct way at a time when a lot of indie music seems to be heading toward something more disengaged.
GC: I agree guitar bands are moving away from directness. I guess there is something a little embarrassing about that level of emoting, it's very easy to dismiss and ridicule. It's probably why I listen to less guitar music now-- everything seems a bit more vague and wash-y.
It's funny because I'm a massive Drake fan-- Take Care is my favorite album of the year-- and he's moving toward that specificity in his lyrics. It seems like such a ludicrous thing to say, but I think Drake and I write about similar things a lot of the time. [laughs] There's a lyric from the new track with Stevie Wonder ["Doing It Wrong"]: "We live in a generation of not being in love and not being together/ But we sure make it feel like we're together/ 'Cause we're scared to see each other with somebody else." That lyric is just like loads of Los Campesinos! songs. But he managed to put it into a few lines rather than four albums. [laughs] Nice one, Drake.
But, as a lyricist, I think it's odd how bad lyrics are seemingly more forgivable within rap music than in the context of a guitar band. There are so many amazing couplets on the Drake album, but if you said some of them in the context of a guitar record, it would be laughable. Within guitar music, there are still people who turn their noses up at somebody who is emoting or even trying to be clever. They say, "Oh, he's trying too hard." I'm accused of that all the time-- quite possibly rightly sometimes.
Pitchfork: Well, with someone like Drake, he may expose himself emotionally on one song and then talk about how he's the greatest on the next.
GC: It's a very weird paradox how he's so vulnerable and then he's like, "What? I don't think that. It wasn't me! I'm here with all this money and these girls." I need to work on that side!
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Pitchfork: The Hello Sadness track "Songs About Your Girlfriend" is really biting-- it kind of sounds like your version of a braggadocious rap song.
GC: It was intended to be the dis hit-- the first line is ripped slightly from a T.I. song. I think the level of animosity that our band has seen in the UK is a little bit disproportionate because we came from this background of personal message boards. Some people are like, "Oh, that could have been my band!" I think people are a little bit jealous that we've done all right with it, so that song was a sly up-yours.
Pitchfork: Over the last few years, a couple of people have left the band to go back to school. Have you ever considered doing something like that?
GC: No. It's probably more typical of British bands-- and especially British bands with overly emotional frontmen who apply their personal life into songs-- just to keep going and going while fewer and fewer people care. But that would be embarrassing. It sounds cheesy, but we really do believe in this band. We know that people who do like us really, really like us, and that's not the sort of thing you could ever really give up on. It's funny because every time somebody leaves the band there are fans on messages boards saying, "I really think is the last Campesinos album." But we're happier than we ever have been; we have a new lease on life.
We often get asked, "It must be pretty difficult having seven people in the band." But I think it makes things so much easier because, if you're in a three-piece band, then you're stuck with those two other people all the time. But with there being seven of us, if someone pisses you off you have five other people that you can go to to bitch about it. [laughs]
Watch the video for the title track from Hello Sadness:
Pitchfork: It seems like you're more comfortable writing about sex now, even if it's usually in a self-deprecating way.
GC: Well, I'm not any sort of pin-up, so it's easier to talk about things like that because it immediately has a comedic element to it and it doesn't seem like boasting. Usually, when people sing about sex, you think, "OK, we know you've had sex! You don't need to tell us!" But I think the way that it's set up in a Los Campesinos! song makes it easier to do because it's truthful. And I think indie music fans are more sexualized than they were five years ago because of this boom of things like Tumblr. Everyone seems a lot more sure of themselves and their sexuality, so people want that more in song lyrics.
Pitchfork: Compared to online publishers like Blogspot or LiveJournal, Twitter and Tumblr seem to make it easier to put a contrived image of yourself online.
GC: The whole thing with LiveJournal, WordPress, and Blogspot was oversharing in a detailed way, whereas Tumblr encourages you to just post an image and it's done. It's so easy to create this collage of yourself where each image means nothing and gives no information, but when you compile them all together you can create this person that you want to be. That thing that Drake said about Tumblr was fucking brilliant-- it was brave of him to say so openly that it kind of sucks and to criticize everybody who uses it. It is fucking spooky. And I'm so glad that it didn't exist when I was a teenager because it would have been horrific.
Pitchfork: But you're still exposing yourself in your own way now.
GC: Yeah. It's weird to see the way I've basically put the last four years of my romantic life on record, because it's journalistic and factual. I admire lyricists like Joanna Newsom who transfer themselves to this parallel universe, but I wouldn't be capable of that. I find writing lyrics easy because I'm just writing about myself. It's always incredibly flattering when people praise my lyrics, but it's odd too because I'm not really doing anything. It just happens.
Pitchfork: Well, I think you're selling yourself a little bit short there. I mean, it at least has to rhyme every once in awhile.
GC: [laughs] I guess so. But it's not in my nature to think, "I'll sit down and get these thoughts off of my chest." Lyrics are always done in the last few days of recording when all of the music is complete. I think the lyrics to We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed were all written in the space of three days. My main motivation to write is time pressure. It's not as if I slave over it, so I feel like if it's something that's really good, it should be harder to do.
Pitchfork: Do you still have any sort of day job?
GC: I work part time cutting grass in a graveyard when we're off tour. Just ten hours a week at a local church, maintaining the cemetery. It’s actually something that makes me incredibly happy. Just before we came to the U.S. we had two days off so I was working down there to make some pocket money. So I was listening to the new Drake album amongst all these gravestones, just wielding the trimmer like I'm playing air guitar. But you have to be careful not to get caught. With that job, there's a genuine sense of doing something good: There are all these graves, and if I didn't cut the grass, nobody would. It's just so peaceful. People are really genuinely grateful that the work's being done.
Pitchfork: Do you do any of the digging?
GC: No digging. [laughs] I've not quite graduated to that.
