1:03pm Friday 5th February 2010
By Nick Churchill
LOS Campesinos! have never really hidden their musical light under a bushel – unafraid to take risks with instrumentation, never scared of a wild time or key change, singer Gareth dissecting the post-teenage life experience with a wry scalpel.
So it’s not a shock to find LC messing about with brass arrangements here, as well as strings, while the el-cheapo synth bleeps of yore are harder to discern on what is undeniably a record made by older minds than their previous two.
Interestingly, Gareth sounds a lot more world weary, particularly on the extravagantly-titled A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State: Or, Letters From Me to Charlotte, which dispenses with the excitable puppy delivery in favour of the voice of a man who bears his scars with pride.
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