Sick Scenes

Audio Mixer: Jimmy Robertson.Recording information: Fridao Natura, Portugal.Arranger: Los Campesinos!.One could be excused for wondering why Los Campesinos! are still making records at this late date. When they burst onto the scene in 2007 with a bracing batch of singles -- that sounded like it took the studio engineer's intense concentration to corral the unbridled excitement and frantic energy that came flying off the band like a technicolor rain shower -- they seemed destined to burn brightly for a little while, then burst. Fast forward a decade and they've released their sixth album, Sick Scenes, and it's hard to reconcile the mature, slickly produced music on display with the music they made in their early days. Some constants do endure, like Gareth's lacerating lyrics, the massed vocals in the choruses, the occasional glockenspiel, and a few songs that hit hard sonically and emotionally. The production does what it can to gloss over the emotions with slickly layered guitars and k