A new EP of songs originally recorded for 2011’s Hello Sadness illustrate just how well the band’s simultaneously twee- and emo-adjacent indie rock holds up.
The title of the fourth album by Los Campesinos! was so cloyingly on-the-nose that you had to assume the irony was intentional. Hello Sadness, released in 2011, was pegged as the Welsh band’s “darkest album yet,” trading in their whimsical noise-pop for sweeping rock with heavier themes to match. But Los Campesinos! went into the album sessions with a mission: make a concise, focused record to follow up 2010’s admittedly overstuffed Romance Is Boring. Now, seven tracks that didn’t make the cut get their first official release as Whole Damn Body, an EP timed to coincide with Hello Sadness’ 10th anniversary. Filled with the band’s sticky hooks and guttural vocals, this collection of “new” old music is less a throwback than it is proof of consistency—and of the way the band’s simultaneously twee- and emo-adjacent indie rock alienated them from trends even as it cemented their oft-overlooked legacy.
Most of the songs on Whole Damn Body deal with lovelorn woes, a theme in line with the Hello Sadness origin story: Vocalist/lyricist Gareth Campesinos! had left a long-term relationship just before taking off to Spain for album writing sessions (he once likened the record’s subject matter to that of Take Care). As with all good things Los Campesinos!, Whole Damn Body doesn’t hesitate to get hyper-specific: “You asked if you could see me before I went to Spain,” Gareth sings in “Tiptoe Through the True Bits.”
Lyrically, Whole Damn Body is classic LC!: drunken gags, salty insults, and soccer references. “Allez Les Blues” flips the French team slogan into a sneer about the other type of blues: “We’re singing, ‘Allez les blues’/’Cause they hold me closer than you would ever do.” Perhaps one of the band’s angriest songs, “Dumb Luck” explores a stage of post-breakup grief hardly heard on Hello Sadness: “When the Third World War comes, it will not be fought on race,” Gareth taunts an ex. “We will line up here in two rows: betrayers versus betrayed.” The whip-smart wordplay of “She Crows” tracks his own ascent to minor indie fame, sizing up the relative prestige of “writing sleeper hits for all these weeping dipshits” and being adored by “finger-sucking, singer-fucking girls”—after all, who in this industry decides what success really is?
Even as their sound shifted from scrappy indie pop towards a more polished aesthetic, Los Campesinos! prioritized songwriting quality over fads or marketability. The band’s catalog has aged remarkably well over the years; even the decade-old tracks on Whole Damn Body feel fresh. The EP’s highlights, like the rollicking drums of “She Crows (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #4)” or the group vocals on “Dumb Luck,” feel just as likely to rile up a midsized crowd in 2021 as in 2011. The uncharacteristically mellow “Four Seasons” is weak by comparison, but on the whole, this collection of leftovers is remarkably appetizing.
Until now, all but one of the Whole Damn Body tracks were available only through Heat Rash, the 7"-and-zine subscription series the band ran around the time of Hello Sadness’ release. Ten years later, the choice feels right in line with the Los Campesinos! ethos: Never quite on time and never too concerned with making it big, they proudly owed their success to the community that backed them. Whole Damn Body tracks what we knew about Los Campesinos! all along: Authenticity goes a long way.
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