hello. it’s been a while. how are you? i’ve decided to put some real effort into this again. a little undecided about the exact direction, but i’d like to go back to the days when i wrote about new music loads. i’m sure there will still be the odd album and live review and i’ll probably include anything i write for other sites on here as well, but the main aim will be new music. yeah. decided now. oh, and i’ll still post a load of videos. mainly because they take about two minutes to do and are an easy post. i thought as a bit of a welcome back (in addition to the amazing competition i’ll be posting either later tonight or tomorrow morning) i’d quickly tell you what i think about some of the albums that have come out recently.

sitting comfortably? then we’ll begin.

feist. metals. (buy here)
she’s fucking good isn’t she. she’ll be touring early next year and i want to go. feist at the albert hall? that’ll be amazing. 8

justice. audio, video, disco. (buy here)
brilliant. not as ipod friendly as † but this will sound pretty awesome live. 9

summer camp. welcome to condale. (buy here)
can you imagine if this had been rubbish. two years of stalking the two of them totally wasted. fortunately it isn’t. perfect. seriously. i love the little town of condale the’ve put together and i want to be brian krakow. 10

los campesinos! hello sadness. (buy here)
recently there was a twitter hashtag game of #lessexcitingbandnames. my favourite? “los campesinos.” i found that fucking hilarious. only challenged by “the bernard matthews band”. 8

yeah, so i’ve pretty much only chosen albums i really, really like. live with it. anyway, stay tuned for a competition coming up soon. i’m not going to give it away, but if you want to see yuck live in london at the end of the month, you’ll want to enter.

barbie dolls giving handjobs. gareth putting a plastic bag over his head. blood. those los campesinos! scamps are not the perfect role models. ‘by your hand’ is classic los campesinos! though. they’re doing what they do best. gareth singing about broken hearts and love and what have you. if you don’t want to see the video because you’re worried that it will corrupt your little mind, fear not for the band are also offering it as a free download. they’re nice like that.

it’s all a precursor to the recently announced new album, hello sadness. the band are offering it out to fans first as well which is nice. you can order it right here. being a heat rash member i get it for a fiver off. add to the music and fanzine i’ve already been sent and heat rash membership is proving very worthwhile. on that though, is any of the band happen across this article, please let me know what i need to do to change my address. i can’t find anything on the website and i’ve moved since i joined. please help. please.

one last thing. sockformation’s favourite member, the wonderful harriet, has left the band. it was announced at the end of august that she was going back to study. i imagine that she made the decision after featuring in our very own “currently.in.love.with” earlier this year. you can’t really get a higher accolade than that.

i got home yesterday to find a beautiful site. a lovely square envelope marked with me name on the front, and a return address of “lc!” heat rash #1 was here.

for the uninitiated, los campesinos! have launched a subscription service where us fans can get exclusive releases, reduced merchandise and, best of all, a proper fanzine. los campesinos! have brought the traditional fan club model back.

the theme of heat rash #1 is romance. this is covered throughout the fanzine by each member of the band. beautifully illustrated, the mag also gives you the chance to find out exactly what harriet’s five favourite romantic nick cave lyrics are. jason gives you a quick run down of what different heart tattoos mean. there is poetry, photography and a brilliant little comic strip. in another shout back to the fan clubs and smash hits magazine of the past, there is also a page with all the lyrics to the two new tracks.

the two songs (‘light leaves, dark seas’ and ‘four seasons’) were written specifically for heat rash. both are on the double a-side vinyl, but you also get a link to download them. they stick to the theme of romance, which if we’re fair isn’t a stretch for los campesinos! this is the subject at which they excel and these tracks are no exception. it will be interesting to see what they come up with for future themes. i’m hoping for one based purely on the drinking habit of gary and tony in men behaving badly.

if you’re not already involved, you should be. head over and subscribe now before you miss out on issue #1.

live review: grouplove / summer camp / los campesinos! shepherd’s bush empire. 2 february 2011.

i like shepherd’s bush empire. i’m not sure what it is about it. anybody who knows me will know my hatred of brixton academy, and the empire is of course from the same stable. and it hasn’t even got brixton’s only good feature; the sloping floor. plus, it is so far west that sometimes i feel like i’m actually travelling to see los campesinos! in their home town of cardiff. what it does well is what brixton’s main failure is. you can get served at the bar. that’s what makes a good venue for me. whether you’re in the tiny basement of a pub in stoke newington or among 80,000 people at a farm in reading, if you can’t get a pint within two minutes don’t bother.

that and i quite like the stage setting.

anyway, we weren’t there to rate the beer. we were there for part of nme’s increasingly good awards tour. whatever you think about the magazine, you can’t fault the quality of new music they bring to us over a month or two early each year. grouplove kicked things off for the evening, but i’ll have to skirt over them quite quickly because we only made it for the closing song. luckily that was the fantastic ‘colours’, which if you haven’t heard you can get as a free legal download with a quick google search (other search engine are available).

next up were the always brilliant summer camp. looking around at the now pretty close to capacity empire, i couldn’t help but reflect back to when i first saw them in the little room upstairs at the lexington for the launch of single ‘ghost train’. they’ve come a long way and deserve it. jeremy warmsley exudes musical talent from every bone in his body. as for miss sankey, her voice is so suited to the sound that jeremy produces that it is as if they were made to make music together. maybe they were?

i was especially excited to see los campesinos! headline. i hadn’t seen them live for three or four years, and never since i’d made the move to london. i know of nobody that dislikes los campesinos! and what they have in droves are very enthusiastic fans. they are one of my favourite bands, and i would guess that the same went for many others there. nobody was just there to see some music. they were there to see a hugely talented collection, led by the genius of gareth (who, if twitter is anything to go by, also seems very normal and nice) perform. having the entire crowd sing “you could never kiss a tory boy without cutting off your tongue again” back at you must be quite a decent pay off for the work they put in.

i loved the night, and loved the bands. okay so it took us several hours to get back to the haven of n16 thanks to some bad decisions when it came to ‘can we fit a pint in before the last tube?’ (answer: no), but it was worth it. and you know what? i’d still go for that last pint if i was to do it again. that last pint is the best time to discuss the gig you’ve just seen, and there was plenty to discuss and rave about.

this review originally appeared on freedom spark

coming up over the christmas period i’m with the family and all that jazz for most of the time so posts might be a little irregular. i’ll be trying to do a couple of features though and a few spotify playlists. first off, this one. i’ve chosen my favourite track from each of the 2010 albums of the year i picked, other than those that aren’t on spotify. as an extra bonus i’ve put in my choices from my favourite three eps from 2010 as well. what’s more, my two favourite singles that aren’t on any of those records (still with me?) are here too… that’s ‘the sea is a good place to think of the future’ and spanish sahara’ by the way.

sockformation’s top ten albums of 2010 and then some other tracks as well (spotify)

“is this the beginning of the end?
nah, the end of the beginning. now we get serious. g”

that quote is from the los campesinos! formspring and is related to the departure of the original drummer ollie campesinos! it’s apparent that fans (gareth has responded to rumours multiple times in multiple mediums) saw ollie’s departure as symptomatic of a wider schism in the band, which would result in the eventual death of los campesinos! gareth in his formspring answer assayed these fears but his wordplay and declaration of ‘now we get serious’ has repercussions with regards to how we should view ‘all’s well that ends’.

all’s well that ends is, seemingly, the metaphorical line in the sand that separates “the beginning” from the “serious”. contextualising ‘all’s well that ends’ reveals it’s a lyrical fragment from ‘i warned you do not make an enemy of me’ from romance is boring; this inexorably ties the ep to romance is boring ie. “the beginning”, but instead of an exploitative cash grab acoustic ep, we’re presented with legitimately reworked versions of ‘romance is boring’, ‘a heat rash in the shape of the show me state or, letters from me to charlotte’, ‘straight in at 101’ and ‘in media res’.

the “serious” is not that these songs are sombre (the conceit that bands that get darker are getting serious is hideous) in their reworking: that’s too simplistic; the “serious” is an acknowledgment on los campesinos! part that they are moving away from their roots in twee revivalism, as they were once termed by swells (in a kinder moment). this acknowledgment is heard through the prominence given to gareth’s lyrics and voice, no longer are they buried under the weight of a fast tempo, rather, the narrative is now dictating the tempo. the removal of layers, best heard on ‘(all’s well that ends) in media res’, is another aspect of the tacit acknowledgment that they are moving away from their roots and getting “serious”.

it’s a genuinely interesting ep both musically and for what it represents with regards to the future of los campesinos!

words by luke carlisle