Last night I went to see Los Campesinos! at The Garage, here in London. My gig companions were the erstwhile Kieron Gillen and the awful Matthew Sheret, the latter describing the night as “a stag night for terribly awkward boys”. He wasn’t far wrong.

But first, the Garage. It’s a nice enough venue, apparently redone from the dank hole it was before. I’ve got a soft spot for venues that are just one big room with a bar at the back, though in this case it didn’t do too well for Sparky Deathcap’s twee acoustic set, given that you could barely hear him over people chatting. Had a lovely PowerPoint going on, mind. Nevertheless, he was joined by Los Camp for the last few songs of his set, which were certainly louder but somewhat less enchanting.

Copy Haho produced an extremely tight and enjoyable set that was a lot of fun. My deduction that they were probably sponsored by Fender given that they were all playing Fender guitars led Gillen to label me the “power pop Poirot“. I’ve been called worse. Any enthusiasm I had for them was somewhat tempered by their bass player staring me out like a hawk, though.

And so to Los Campesinos! then. I never much cared for their earlier stuff, with tracks like We Throw Parties, You Throw Knifes being considerably more twee than I was able to handle. However, the sound of their new stuff is nothing short of astonishing. I blogged about The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future last month, and it was one of the highlights of an exuberant, powerful and joyful set.

Los Campesinos! at the Garage, 28 Oct 2009

The crowd were there for all the singalongs, and the noise accompanying lead singer Gareth to “I hope my heart goes first” in We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed could have taken the roof off the place. Gillen’s description of Gareth as “the angriest xylophone player on the planet” is spot on, even if he gets the instrument wrong (it’s a glockenspiel). How he manages combine accuracy with fury is something I’ll spend hours pondering.

So a bit of a lovely gig, all things considered. Plus we got to play indie bingo, which is a highlight of any night. New tracks like Romance Is Boring from their new album of the same name were a fascinating glimpse into the LP, which doesn’t come out until next February. I will have trouble waiting.