-erin wabisca

2009 was an awesome year. It was the year Barack Obama got elected and dare I say more importantly Lady Gaga started the trend of not wearing any pants. My favorite thing of the year would have to be the song The Sea is a Good Place by Los Campesinos!.

This is a departure from the sound Los Campesinos had on their debut album Hold On Now Youngsters which was released in 2008. This band ,hailing from Cardiff in Wales, debut album is aggressively giddy. It is tweecore at it finest.  Their second album We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed was a decidedly less giddy affair but it isn’t as melancholy as this single. Los Campesinos! have evolved over the past 2 years into one of the greatest bands of our time. They have evolved from a band that could be easily put into the genre of tweecore, into one that pushes its boundaries beyond any distinguishable genre. They release music at an incredibly fast rate yet still make amazing albums.

This song is amazing in its ability to be emotional while still maintaining authenticity. Its brooding without being over emotional. It is moody without being annoying. It is epic yet it is subtle. It deals with real issues in an honest ways without being over indulgent.

A fun fact is that the music video above was directed by the band’s bassist, Ellen Campesinos! (yes the members of Los Campesinos do a Ramones style last name change). For the record none of the original members were related. Then Aleks Campesino quit the band and was replaced by Gareth Campesino’s real biological sister Kim Campesino.

The icing on the cake that makes this song really awesome is that you can legally download it off of Los Campesinos! official website loscampesinos.com

Their new album titled Romance Is Boring, will be released on February 1, 2010. Judging by their previous work and the lead single There Are Listed Buildings, this will be an amazing album. And I’m saying this isn’t download the entire album awesome, it’s actually buy the album in a real record store awesome.