Monday, January 26, 2009
The Spin The Spin: Los Campesinos! at Exit/In
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Check out the slideshow for more photos.
Per usual, we rolled up on Exit/In just in time to catch the last amp-standing, riotous garage-punk moment of the openers, New Jersey five-piece Titus Andronicus. It was too bad, because they sounded like a pretty good time (though later someone told us they weren't that good). The venue was about half full, and it was the usual snakepit. Only this snakepit was crawling with dudes in hoodies with very sensitive faces. Well, except for the one guy wearing the 1987 Cult Electric World Tour T-shirt. We wanted to get that guy a beer. An American beer.
So, we used the time to chat with the Los Campesinos! merch girl Kelly, who kindly informed us of three pieces of information:
1. This was the band's first time in Nashville, but their third time in the States.
2. The in-store earlier in the day at Grimey's had been a terrific success, with people waiting out the door.
3. The band is actually English, not Welsh. They had simply met in Wales at Cardiff University, and the chick with the red hair in the band was like, Russian or something.
Armed with this new knowledge, we proceeded to take up our usual back-center of the venue position. Had they been Welsh, we surely would have wanted to inspect them more closely. But with English dudes, we already definitely know which end of an ace is up.
It was a brisk, upbeat show. They kicked off with "Ways to Make It Through the Wall" off the new album We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, and kept the rest of the under-an-hour set at the same pace with all of their bounciest most deeply unhappy but petulantly giddy material.
Save for a few bouncing fans, everyone else were head-nodders--captive, receptive, but clearly unfamiliar with the material. Being British, the band were exceedingly polite and witty.
"We're honored to be here among such luminaries," lead singer Gareth said pointing to the Exit/In wall of fame. "But we're disappointed that it was Cracker that played here and not Uncle Kracker. That's been confusing us for a bit." Or something like that.
They traipsed through the slap-happy "My Year in Lists," which got a few more familiar ears pricked up, but it wasn't until they played the MySpace/blog sensation "Me! You! Dancing!" that the crowd went appropriately wild to a situation where a fairly reserved but polite British band plays their "hit." It was them! and us! and kinda dancing! Very cool, very cool.
They played the title track off Beautiful, Doomed and nailed the shouty explosive end line, "I hope my heart goes first!", which got the band riled up for their encore. Fun factoid: That encore included the drummer grabbing a role of toilet paper and chucking it into the audience. And it did involve someone in the audience chucking it back at said drummer, who happened to be shirtless in the British sense--you know, inoffensively, considerately shirtless. And talk about considerate--those crazy kids had us back in our cars by 11:45 p.m.
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