As far as debuts go, few albums arrive as polished as Hold On Now, Youngster, by Los Campesinos!, when it hit shelves earlier this year. Everything - from the endless melodic hooks and tongue-in-cheek romantic catharses, to the endless track titles and foldout album art - resonates with a harmony altogether different from the joyful chaos generated by the Welsh septet. In a year packed with fewer excellent records than usual, Hold On Now, Youngster is one of 2008's few great highlights.
Los Campesinos! (whose name means peasants"" in Spanish) caused a surprise with their decision to ignore the usual two-three year schedule and drop their second album scarcely six months after their first. Aside from its unorthodox production schedule, however, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed boasts many of the same highs and lows of the average sophomore release.
To dispense with the bad news first, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is conspicuously short. With just 10 tracks, including a pair of interludes, the album clocks in at just over half an hour, a disappointing development for any fan who has been gobbling up anything and everything the group has released to date. The second, related complaint is that the record feels a bit uneven, with most of the best cuts packed into the first half, contrasting strongly with Hold On Now, Youngster's stellar finish.
Besides those qualified criticisms, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed offers further evidence of Los Campesinos!' first-rate songwriting chops. Opting for a relatively more heavily produced sound over the lo-fi charms of their debut, most of the best songs here split the difference between wide-open distortion and the indie rock orchestra aesthetic, like a funny, self-deprecating companion to the Arcade Fire. The wall-of-sound approach employed on We Are Beautiful requires a bit of an adjustment from the band's more transparent garage rock textures of yester-uh-months, but the payoff comes in the form of several spectacular climaxes.
The album is buoyed by a handful of fantastic tracks in its first half, beginning with the leadoff ""Ways To Make It Through The Wall."" The group's heaviest track succinctly captures the band's prevailing attitude, making an optimistic, hand-clapping chant out of the statement, ""We are waiting here for catastrophe.""
""We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,"" the album's title track and strongest entry, describes the collapse of a long-distance relationship with all of the wit and attention to lyrical detail that make the band's songs warrant repeated listens. The song's sighing violin hook - which would fit perfectly into an up-tempo Andrew Bird single - intertwines with the twisting romantic clichés (""Absence makes the heart grow fonder / fondness makes the absence longer / length loses my interest / I'm a realist"").
Ultimately, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed's biggest weakness is simply in following so closely behind the band's superior debut. As sophomore slumps go, however, Los Campesinos! have only managed to slip a bit - still more-than-earning their grammatically awkward exclamation point and still in great position to make the top of the year-end honor roll.
