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Los Campesinos! - 'Death To Los Campesinos!'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:43 UK time, Saturday, 9 February 2008

Los Campesinos!Can you hold a mirror up to music? I know you can make music which sounds like a photocopy of other music, or an extra-super-enhanced digitally-remastered upgrade of other music, but can you actually reflect music? Is there such a thing as a mirror image of a song, one which contains all of the hallmarks, peaks and troughs of the original, but is somehow inverted, so that left is right, up is down, and cats are dogs?

(Incidentally, THIS is how you make the boring 'band in a studio' video into something worth watching. Unicorns! Kittens! Rainbows! People sicking up confetti! The band die at the end! It's safe to say OneRepublic would not make a video like this.)

Anyway, back to the mirror stuff. The thing about this song is that it's exactly the same as 'You! Me! Dancing!', which I probably went on about a bit too much for most of the last year. It's got the same giddy wall-of-sound thing going on, it's got the same manic wash of tinkly xylophone and grubby guitars, and the same sort of super-sibilant smart-arse lyrics (which don't always scan properly), spat out at breakneck pace and daring you to go back and listen properly again, so you don't miss all the fine detail.

But it's not the same song. It's clearly a different song. But it does sound like it's the same. But it's different. It's the same, but different. Same. Different...why do I suddenly find myself thinking of the X-Factor?

It's as if there's an alternative universe in which the same band, made of the exact same people, who've all had exactly the same lives up until this point, settle down to write a new song. In one universe, they come back with 'You! Me! Dancing!', and in the other, 'Death To Los Campesinos!'. And then somehow the two universes converge, but both songs survive the transition, and the band now can't choose between them, so they record both of them.

And you know what? It's all to the good. This universe is clearly big enough to contain songs and their reflections, and the reflections of their reflections, and the reflections of the reflections of their reflections (I've heard the album, can you tell?). And the Campesinos! thing is all about spiky lyrics hidden in ecstatic music, which you can't ever really have too much of. Hell they even

Having said that, variety is the spice of life, which does make you thank the good Lord for the fun of making really long iPod playlists and putting songs like this (and its reflection) in.

Four starsDownload: Out now
CD Released: February 18th

(Fraser McAlpine)

PS: Listen to the ChartBlog interview with Gareth Campesinos, right here...

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