Los Campesinos!: "By Your Hand"

I have an enduring fondness for British bands with a propensity for disclosing the travails of their personal lives in vivid and often melancholic detail. For me, there is simply no turning down Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad, Glasvegas, and most recently Los Campesinos!, when one of their respective tunes turns up via my iTunes' shuffle. Los Campesinos! released their forth studio album, Hello Sadness, a few months back and it is bundled up with the quintessential droll wit and clever self-deprecation that listeners have come to expect from the seven-piece Welsh outfit. Nowhere else will you find choice lyrics such as: "I christen all the ships that sailed/On your little kisses saliva trails." Hello Sadness takes a step back from the roughness of the group's previous release Romance is Boring, which explored the fringes of noise rock, and instead favors crisper guitar work, melodic keyboards, and some intoxicating sing-along choruses. "By Your Hand," the introductory track, embodies these pop qualities and sets the tone for the remainder of the album.

It often seems that lead singer Gareth Campesinos! is beset at every turn of life with a tremendous emotional episode or burden. "By Your Hand" relates a relationship rife with uncertainties and desires, but showered in an ironical reversal of gender roles. Our narrator finds himself enrapt with an assertive and forceful woman described as having "eyes of doe and thighs of stallion," establishing an androgyny that imparts characteristics to this woman more generally associated with masculinity. Her designs are anything but romantic, and her actions reinforce the notion of a woman who is both androgynous and virile: "Cause we were kissing for hours/with her hands in my trousers/she could not contain herself/suggest we go back to her house/But here it comes/this is the crux/she vomits down my rental tux." Gareth Campesinos! delivers pointed verses, bemoaning what a cruel mistress fate is, and his foolish hope that this woman reciprocates the affections he feels: "By your hand is the only end I foresee/I have been dreaming you've been dreaming about me." The absence of sincere endearment and emotional unattainability of our narrator's consort lead to a lack of conviction ("I'm not sure if it's love anymore, but I've been thinking of you fondly for sure") and self-loathing ("Spitting cusses at my face, reflected in the window pane/Throwing insults and calling names").

Instead of treating these issues with the heavy gravitas that other artists might accord them, Los Campesinos! deliver the very same matters with a sardonic wryness and upbeat orchestration which in turn becomes more accessible and digestible.