Los Campesinos - Hold on Now Youngster...

There was, once a time when ‘pop’ wasn’t a dirty word. From the halcyon days of the sixties, up until the days of convention-smashing, globe-straddling superstars of the eighties, pop once merely meant ‘popular.’ Even Britpop did exactly what it said on the tin; it was quintessentially British, it was popular, and it was occasionally fucking fantastic.

Pop music wasn’t always pre-packaged shite, arranged and stylised on the conveyor belt of Idiots Texting Votes and the gravy-train of Cowell et al. And nor need it be.

Hold on Now Youngster… is pop music. Bloody brilliant pop music.

Los Campesinos’ hype-soaked debut long-player takes its lead from the underground alt-pop of the eighties, the band holding up Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson as a messianic figure for the excluded and the poetic, the twee and the sugary-sweet, a subculture where mix-tapes still form a fundamental part of any burgeoning relationship, and a firm grounding in English literature is positively encouraged: “just don’t read Jane Eyre.”

Its an album that is equal parts innocent and intelligent, a deliberate doe-eyed charm juxtaposed against references ill-befitting its exuberance; obscure Oxford post-rockers Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia, the aforementioned Eyre and Johnson’s K Records label all get mentions, teamed with self-depreciating honesty and anxiety, like “If there’s one thing I can never confess / its that I can’t dance a single step,” and “I know he took you to the beach.” Thankfully, there’s enough humour and self-awareness here to avoid such often trivial relationship issues plunging into the territory usually reserved for pseudo-angst emo shtick, and the too-clever-for-its-own-good standalone single International Tweecore Underground has been left out. All of the early favourites survive however, so we can be reminded just how good You! Me! Dancing! and Death to Los Campesinos! were, whilst being treated to a glut of equally well-crafted new tracks, which follow in the singles’ formula of massive choruses and knowing lyrics.

Pedantry it may be, but you have to admire the educated swipe that is “it’s bad enough you ever used the word as an adjective” and agree that “four sweaty boys with guitars tell me nothing about my life”, whilst 2007, The Year Punk Rock Broke (My Heart) tells us that Los Cam are so quaintly eighties that they still use their Walkmans, apparently.

Many people will love this album for many different reasons. It may speak to your dainty, fretful side. It may be the deft intellectualism, and the literate lyricism. Or it might just be the tunes.

No matter the reason, Hold on Now Youngster is an album that knows its audience, but grows beyond it and becomes the first great pop album of the year.