Interviews

2010: We Wait In Anticipation

• 4th Jan 2010

As we leave 2009, and subsequently enter the final year of the decade, it is only fitting to look forward to the dawning of a new era by pinpointing the bands that will undoubtedly add some sparkle to an inevitable period of further recession, further flu and further misery.

One band whose interest seems more fixed on the size of a wave than the size of an epidemic is victims of the hype machine, The Drums. Plunging into an ocean with nothing but melancholic poetry, delightful harmonies and extraordinarily perfect haircuts, The Drums are a fresh reminder of the pleasures of youth. With verse dedicated to lost love, the tragedy of stupidity and the incomparable scene of Summer, the picture painted by the four-piece is one of jaunty tranquillity, a busy image of hand-clapping and hand-holding. What is most endearing though is that even in their brilliance there is desperation beyond compare. With every smile, The Drums seem resigned to make the next one larger. “Summertime!” their debut E.P is an utterly gorgeous beginning to their career, every word drips onto your bottom lip, like the coldest spot of lolly ice, like the bravest new idea. New ideas that the whole world will get to see and hear come 2010, through azure tinted spectacles.

Those who don’t don the sky-blue shades may want to refer to Rayban and darken their pupils for the coming of O.Children whose brand of doomed macabre will see the genre so purified by White Lies converted back to its raw and haunting state. With lead singer, Tobias, lurched over his microphone like a fashionable graveyard digger, digging to the sound of synthesisers on fire; the age of frightening the audience will return, return with choruses surrounding death, sex, death and sex and will return with a cloak of authentic darkness that should finally rid the world of false gloom and give it what it deserves, something to genuinely feel uneasy about.

Joining these kids on my list of bands to watch out for in 10’ are seasoned professionals Los Campesinos! who two albums in have provided more stomach turning moments, more minutes of bliss and more lip-syncing than any other band I have ever had the pleasure to listen to. So why include a two-album-in-er band?

Simply because I anticipate that their third long player “Romance is Boring” will be their best yet.

They never really were the twee-poppers the media labelled them, or indeed the colourful bunch of jittering awkwardness that we were led to believe; they are and always have been a lonely cry of originality, spelt out in letters of wit and intelligence, crafted from a chewed biro on trains and buses and underlined with a felt-tip found underneath the bed of an ex-lover. There has always been something unsettling about the squirming gasp of Gareth Campesinos, and his storytelling has remained compelling throughout the bands short but divine history. In 2010, his tales of late nights, early mornings, frivolous hope and desperation will sound more important than ever. They will sound like hymns, like psychopathic gospels and after 1,2,3,4 the country will sing…

“We kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future!”
Gareth Campesinos!

Ironically, the only thing stopping the above quote becoming prophetic is the band itself.

They are the future.