MOG

Mogstars: 8/10

Twelve seconds into the album and I’ve already been pinned to the wall. Within two minutes I am already exhausted, it seems more like taking a jog than listening to music. Thankfully at two minutes forty the eclectic burst of opening energy finally affords the listener some breathing space. Three minutes per song and just as many chords per-track, this is a vigorous workout of indie-punk.

Los Campesinos! are hardly MOR are material, more like toddlers who’ve finally broken into the sugar cupboard – tracknames are littered with exclamation marks, and the whole band seem to have an ADHD chic vibe about them. The Cardiff seven (yes seven!) piece emerged from university in 2006, bagging a support slot with Broken Social Scene with eight months, and since then have garnered the support of the indie presses, powered by Myspace friends and E-numbers.

Fantastically frenetic, first track Death To Loss Campesinos! seems to explode instantly sending the hapless listener Flying across the room. Boy/girl exclamations fly from speaker to speaker, with hectic downstrokes and machine gun lead guitars testing the limits of the musical throttle. Yet this is not just mindless noise at hyper-sonic speeds, indie-pop sensibility is always retained, as is the playful intellect of the lyrics – “Broken down like the war economy” not the dumbest of opening similes

The slightly (and I mean very slightly) more sedate This Is How You Spell “Ha Ha Ha We Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux Romantics” deserves plaudits for the name alone, even more so for shoe-horning it into a chorus, however the stream of consciousness bridge applies an supreme poetic flourish, with the repeated interjection “We have to take the car 'cause the bike's on fire/We cannot trust your friends 'cause they were born liars” juxtaposes the surreal and the sublime with aplomb. The perfect pretentious uni love song, this is a masterpiece of self-mockery with a kickass beat to boot.

Yet it is You! Me! Dancing! that stands as the real highlight of the album. At over five minutes it could at first look like a heart-attack inducing over stretch, but in fact it becomes a scintillating party track. Climbing from a single chiming string, it draws you with bated breathe onto the dancefloor, seventy seconds and the pace begins to pick up, but all you can do is wait, the strumming becoming faster and faster, before after an exasperating one minute forty the cathartic blast of melody comes, followed at 2:30 by the band’s most honest pithy lyrics and charming harmonies. By the time the song free wheels into its final minutes the satisfaction is complete and almost post-coital.

Los Campesinos! are a refreshing blast of punk-pop, serious without being overbearing, energetic and exhausting. Every track comes ready formed for skinny jean clad disco depravity travelling at breakneck speed, towards glo-stick filled hyperspace, changing gears at just the right time to allow the briefest of recovery times before heading off on another pogo-ing perversion. But this is more than high speed chords and slogan shouting fun, a razor sharp wit and lyrical panache constantly trying to keep up with everything. Definitely a party record, but with a serious side it for the home stereo. Just don’t play it around people with a history of heart problems.