I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

Los Campesinos! are a seven piece indie pop band that formed in 2006 while attending Cardiff University in the UK. Since then, they have toured with Canada’s own Broken Social Scene, signed to Canadian label Arts&Crafts, and released two full length albums. They are currently in the process of recording their third album and are enjoying every minute of it. We caught up with vocalist Gareth when they stopped off in Toronto on April 1^st.

iheartthemusic: Welcome back to Toronto,  are you excited to be playing here again?

Gareth: Toronto is probably one of the cities we’ve played in the most, to be honest, because our record label is based out of here, we’ve had the pleasure of spending a lot of time in Toronto. It’s always nice, we always have nice audiences and seem to play at a different venue every time too. This one, [The Opera House], is particularly pretty.

iheartthemusic: Where did you play last time?

Gareth: Last time we played Lee’s Palace, we played Mod Club, and way back when we played at the Horseshoe. One thing about this place [The Opera House] is that we recorded a music video here. It was the first single we released, which was recorded on that stage, so it is surreal to be back and playing a proper show.

iheartthemusic: It must make it more comfortable for you.

Gareth: Yah, we knew where the toilets were and we knew where backstage was, so it’s just like coming home!

iheartthemusic: With no musical background, how did you decide to start a band?

Gareth: I think we were all just music fans and I think that, often, if you do come from a musical background or are a scholar in music, it is detrimental to making exciting original music because it kind of becomes a bit more like an occupation. With us, however, just being people who enjoy listening to music and going to concerts, we are coming from a really honest position. So rather than it being an occupation, it is just like a hobby that we have been fortunate enough to do full time.

iheartthemusic: You guys seem to have a close connection to Canada, where did this connection initially come from?

Gareth: I think, certainly at the time of us forming ,Canadian music was, well actually it still is now, getting a lot of exposure, like with Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire. At that time specifically, it was really really exciting, and then we had this opportunity to play with Broken Social Scene, and subsequently signed to Arts&Crafts, so it just worked out perfectly. Canada has been really good to us. We played our first ever North American show at Hillside Festival in Guelph, that was incredibly exciting, and since then we have come back and it’s been great. We also recorded our first album just outside of Toronto, so it always feels like a bit of a homecoming.

iheartthemusic: There was mention in a previous interview that you formed in reaction to the UK music scene at the time, what exactly did you mean by that?

Gareth: At the time, the UK music scene was a really watered-down version of US music. Everything seemed to be a version of like The Strokes or The Libertines, who are both good bands, but most of the bands coming out of London were so obviously indebted to those bands that it often seemed like a poor version of them. There was also a real revival of lad rock so lots of bands were being influenced by Oasis and things like that. Since then, I think it has caused a lot of bands to form and the UK music scene, at the moment, is incredibly rich;  there are so many great bands that we have had the pleasure of sharing gigs with.

iheartthemusic: You also had a really crazy year in 2008 with the release of two albums almost simultaneously – the second one being a “limited release.” What was the reasoning behind that?

Gareth: We didn’t ever really consider it to be an album as such. We went into the studio to record four or five tracks and release an EP, but once we got in the studio we worked a lot more quickly than we expected to and we were a lot more productive and we ended up with these 10 tracks. I think a lot of bands would have probably sat on them and waited for a year or so and then released it as a full album. However,  going back to the fact that we realized we were incredibly lucky to be doing this, we just wanted to release it as quickly as possible. The limited edition thing pays tribute to the fact that those 10 songs very much seem to represent a six-month period of the band’s life, so it seemed very much of-the-moment… I think the whole limited edition aspect just seems a lot more romantic, rather than this mass produced thing that is going to linger on shop shelves forever and nobody is going to really care about. We did a limited run and we put a heck of a lot of effort into our packaging; the design and the artwork and what we produced was something that was a bit more than just a regular CD release. It’s hard to have a sense of an event with downloading as it is now. People don’t really care about the full product, so we really put a lot of effort into that, hopefully as an incentive to make people want to buy it, rather than just download it in 20 seconds off of the Internet.

iheartthemusic: So with the single being so popular nowadays, has that affected your writing style at all?

Gareth: No, not at all. I think if it did then we would be compromising what we intended to do musically. That’s very much a product of the modern day and it would be slightly dishonest if we were to go and be, “like we have to write something that is going to be three minutes long that they can play on the radio.” We write the songs we want to write, rather than the ones that business sense-wise might, if we were going to critically think about it, be perhaps more successful.

iheartthemusic: Well that mentality has not hurt you so far!

Gareth: No, exactly. I mean, we are here in Toronto, we were in Montreal last night and this is our second US tour of the year, so it’s going well.  Most importantly, we are enjoying it and everything that we have done we have done exactly the way we have wanted to do it, rather than with a record label telling us how to do it, and that’s been really important to us.

iheartthemusic: How do you come up with your song and album titles?

Gareth: I like long interesting song titles. Going back to the whole download thing, if you do download an MP3 file, I personally would be far more likely to listen to  something if it had an interesting title than if it had a radio title that has been used 100 times before. I mean, with We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, that completely summed up the lyrical themes of the record and I think it acts as a good analogy for how Los Campesinos! feels. We are all aware that what we are doing is amazing and that’s the beautiful side of it, but inevitably, we know we aren’t going to be a band forever. There is going to be a time when the band will stop and we will have to get a proper job or whatever, so that’s the doomed side. We are aware of that, however, so it’s not really a sad thing, we are just enjoying it.

iheartthemusic: So what is your favourite song to play live and why?

Gareth: I think probably the title track off the newest record, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, is probably my favourite, or a song called “Miserabilia” off the same record. “Miserabilia” is great because there is lots of shouting and I play a little bit of floor tom on it as well so I enjoy pounding that. “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” is incredibly cathartic and lyrically it’s my favourite song of ours. It’s also got this big release at the end and the bridge has this cute sing-a-long bit to it. I always enjoy playing that.

iheartthemusic: Doing so many interviews, I know that questions can get fairly repetitive, so what is the one thing that you wish you were asked or at least were able to talk about?

Gareth: The lack of extreme depth that often interviews go into has been one of the things that has caused us to start this blog, because if you’ve read it then you would probably be aware that it goes into far too much detail.

iheartthemusic: Like the wanking comment?

Gareth: That’s not me! That was a conversation that was had. We are seven very remedial humans and most of the conversation has always come down to toilets, sex and… just those two pretty much!

iheartthemusic: Keeps it interesting, I guess!

Gareth: It does! I think we are treading on similar ground constantly, but there’s always a new pun to make or a new insult to cast on someone. I’m not going to divulge who said that, but it might not have been someone in our band, which I think narrows it down a bit…

iheartthemusic: I think we can figure it out from there! Last question, when can we expect this third album to be released?

Gareth: I think we will start releasing things from it, like a single or two, by the end of the year, but I think the actual date for the full length album to drop would be the beginning of 2010, which seems like such a long time away. I think it’s going to be a little bit longer this time. I’m slightly worried that with releasing the last two albums so quickly that people are expecting it to come immediately, but this is the first time we’ve really recorded and given ourselves time to live with it. Previously it’s been that we’ve had two weeks to record 15 tracks and get it done. This time we are doing it over the course of two months and then mixing it a month later, so it’s going to be a lot better for us living with the tracks. We want to live with the songs and then it will be all the better for it hopefully – but that remains to be seen.

Photography provided by Carl Heindl