Heartbroken souls that wallow in their sorrows and mope in perpetual gloom have got it all wrong. Nursing emotional wounds is much more productive—and joyous—if approached in the collective manner observed byLos Campesinos!during an 80-minute set Friday at Metro. Doubling as an ideal beginning to a weekend bender, the Welsh indie-pop ensemble’s confrontations of romantic frustrations, daily difficulties and unforeseen ironies made mockeries of love, loneliness and despair.
More Top Picks Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Review
While still channeling the merry exuberance of the band that’s staged two crazed Lollapalooza performances, the latest reconfigured version ofLos Campesinos! sounds tighter and slightly more restrained. Led by giddy frontman Gareth Campesinos! (the members share the same common last name), the septet appears to be maturing at a rate parallel to its pre-collegiate and 20-something fans. All the better for its literate tales of sour breakups, sexual disappointments and recurring downfalls.
Indeed, a majority of the near-capacity crowd seemed to revel in the group’s miseries, contributing communal handclaps and shouting along to stadium-ready, gang-chanted choruses. Animated songs like the spring-loaded “Romance Is Boring,” wailing waltz “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” and galloping “Hello Sadness” invited such participation. They spun with tilt-a-whirl inertia, conjuring the dizziness brought about by a head rush. Gareth’s spontaneous movements—stumbles, staggers, shakes, kicks—exaggerated the hectic pace.
So did his delirious spoken-sung vocal deliveries. Piles of words crashed into each other akin to the way sticks collided with cymbals and flesh smacked against tambourines, triggering noisy clatter. Bright glockenspiel accents, minor keyboard melodies and bleacher-stomping beats added to the childlike innocence of surging material that, if not for its morose topics, wouldn’t have been out of place at a grade-school musical. Gareth’s winking sarcasm offset any temptation to take seriously his grief as a permanent ailment.
No matter how tragic the situation, humor almost always won out and hopefulness streaked through arrangements. But on occasions when tempos slowed and suffering reigned (“To Tundra”), Los Campesinos! sputtered. Such instances were rare. The co-ed band laughed in the face of mortality on “Miserabilia” and the ukulele-adorned “Baby I Got the Death Rattle,” turning many humans’ biggest fear into celebratory satire.