The Beat Surrender

Just in time for Valentines day….comes one of the least loved up album titles you’ll ever see. Los Campesinos! deliver us their third album and according to them Romance Is Boring. Well that may, or may not be the case depending on your viewpoint but luckily there should be no such debate about the bands music.

Three albums in it’s hard to think of them as a young band I guess, but that’s what they are and they still have an infectious enthusiasm to their tracks, as they’ve progressed though they’ve also brought in a keener sense of musicianship and despite adding extra depth to their music and especially their songwriting, they don’t clutter the tracks as much as they used to.

While that was part of their initial early charm, it’s good tosee them maturing so quickly into a band that sound like they could well be around for a lot of years to come. Songs like In Medias Res, I Warned You Do Not Make An Enemy Of Me, The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future and the glorious title track are proof that they are a band that aren’t happy to stand still.

As an album it’s perfectly pieced together and mnakes mincemeat of their debut and for me just shades it over their sophomore effort as the groups strongest to date…and that’s praise indeed as I loved the other two.