Live Review: Los Campesinos! - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 15/12/2021
“Normally, bands play shows if they have something to promote,” Los Campesinos!’s frontman, Gareth Campesinos, declares halfway through the set. “We just couldn’t bear the thought of going through a whole calendar year without a show”.
It seems as though their fans couldn’t, either. As one of three shows that the band are playing in 2021, people have quite literally travelled far and wide to attend tonight’s show at the always brilliant Brudenell Social Club - as I queue in the seemingly never-ending line outside, I detect Scouse and Scottish accents amongst the usual Yorkshire ones.
Despite its overwhelming appearance, the line moves quickly and I find myself inside Brudenell with plenty of time to pick up some merchandise from the stand. From one long queue to another, I wait twenty minutes to bag myself a t-shirt (the heavyweight tote bags had long since sold out - imagine the heartbreak). This is possibly the only concert I’ve ever been to where the line for merch was longer than the one for the bar, and this eagerness makes more sense when I realise that practically everybody in the venue seems to be proudly repping a different era of the band in one way or another: anti-Tories t-shirts, zippo lighter pins, handmade album earrings.
Opening act Fortitude Valley have unfortunately had to cancel their set due to a positive COVID test, so Los Campesinos! make up for it by taking to the stage half an hour earlier than initially planned. ‘Allez les blues’ kicks things off with its perfect slow-rising introduction, and by the time they reach the chorus, the audience’s enthusiasm has set the tone for the rest of the show.
The first half of the set passes by in a blur. Taking us through the greatest hits from the more recent releases, the band never miss a beat. The crowd mimic their high energy, each song being sung more loudly than the last. Before I know it, we’re already at the halfway mark of the calmer, melancholy ‘To Tundra’.
‘To Tundra’ is introduced with a moment dedicated to the band’s 2011 release, Hello Sadness (“the album that marked the end of our critical acclaim”), as they pay tribute to its anniversary. On finishing, we’re promised that the rest of the set will be ‘nothing but bangers’, as though the show hadn’t been already. True to their word, though, the band delve further back into their discography to play some of the biggest Los Campesinos! Classics - including ‘Straight In at 101’ and ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’ back to back, which is a combination almost powerful enough to knock anybody out.
The show nearly passes by without error, until a broken bass string two songs before the encore interrupts the usually smooth transition from ‘The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future’ into ‘Avocado, Baby’. Somebody shouts a reassuring “it doesn’t matter!” but, determined to recover the flow, Gareth encourages us to rechannel our emotions and has the band replay the final notes of the song. The crowd play along like good sports, cheering solemnly as though nothing had gone wrong. Bass recovered, ‘Avocado, Baby’ passes by flawlessly.
Encore time, and less than two minutes of half-hearted cheering and a chant carried out by approximately three people is enough to bring the band back out. “We need to go over the etiquette of an encore,” Gareth scolds jokingly. “If you’re standing facing the stage, then you need to keep clapping.” There’s a lively round of applause to compensate, and this just about merits the reward of four more songs - likely to the dismay of one passionate fan, who uses a brief silence to cry out for ten.
One of these songs is the iconic ‘You! Me! Dancing!’, the one that everybody in the audience is dying to hear. The drum solos are what transcend the experience to another level, alongside the way that the crowd screams every single line. Surrounded by a mass of people singing along to the opening guitar riff, I find myself tearing up. It’s a rare skill to successfully unite such a diverse mix through a love for one song. The band have long since mastered it.
Los Campesinos! May have been a band for over fifteen years, but they show no sign of losing their charm and talents. For a crowd of old fans and new, they give the best performance I have seen in a long time.
Shame about the tote bags, though.
Words by Caitlin Mincher
