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Gareth David talks lapsed fans, financial sustainability and transparency as his band mark their vicennial anniversary. |
| Photo and Words: Marty Hill |
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“It sounds really stupid, but we’re just excited to go to Los Campesinos! shows,” laughs Gareth David. Later this month, his band will play a run of gigs to acknowledge twenty years of existence. It is not, it should be stressed, an ‘anniversary tour’. |
“I feel funny about these anniversary celebrations because we’re not a band that is looking to the past,” he explains. “I’m more excited about the next album than I am about trying to milk this. A lot of bands will do the reunion tours and anniversary shows where they play the album in full. That doesn’t really appeal to us at this point, but I suppose it’s still nice to take a look back and acknowledge how far we’ve come.” |
“It’s amazing how much better everything is now we’re just doing it ourselves.” |
There are few bands who could claim to be at their very best twenty years in. Los Campesinos! — whose early buzz was generated by brash wide-eyed songs played as fast as possible — would seem particularly unlikely candidates back then to go two decades deep, let alone to peak in both popularity and acclaim at the end of that second decade. But this is unquestionably the case. The band released their most impressive record to date two years ago and, perhaps ironically given their reluctance to play the music industry’s games, tallied up more success markers than ever before. The completely self-funded, self-recorded and self-released ‘All Hell’ was given Best New Music by Pitchfork, peaked at number three in the indie charts and fourteen in the album charts and helped them to land their “white whale” set at Primavera as well as a glutton of other highlight reel shows. “It’s amazing how much better everything is now we’re just doing it ourselves,” says Gareth. “You realise how you entrusted a lot of stuff to managers and labels and they just did a bad job. I remember back in the day when we were applying for US visas and we’d end up having to pay the expedited fee, which was twice as much, and only get the visas the day before or the day of the flight. I recall Matt having to go to the embassy one morning and go straight to Heathrow. It was fucking harrowing.” |
Gareth manages the band full-time these days, with the other six members taking a wage alongside other forms of work. “I feel like I’m doing a better job of managing LC! now than anybody else ever previously had,” he says. “I know that sounds like a prick thing to say, but we’re doing better now than we ever have done.” That’s by no means the limit of their pursuit of true independence. There’s an acknowledgement of the head start they had in those early twee-pop days of record advances and Budweiser ad money but, by any measure, Los Campesinos! are a DIY band in 2026. Having been gradually getting back the master rights and the publishing rights, the band has become a much more sustainable pursuit than outsiders might assume based on the lack of external financing. “The money is coming directly to us now, it’s not having 50% taken off by a label that’s acting purely as distro rather than actively promoting the records,” Gareth explains. “The money from streaming feels like it should be more for the figures we’re seeing, but it’s still good money when it comes directly to us. It makes a real difference to the quality of our life but also what we can do as a band.” |
As well as being more lucrative than having percentages siphoned off to labels and managers, operating independently also allows Los Campesinos! to exist on their own terms, doing the things they want to (even if it means making a loss) and not taking opportunities they don’t want to (even if they’d have made loads of money). Just over a year ago, they declined a $60K offer from Airbnb to license a song of theirs due to the company’s continued operation on stolen Palestinian land and contribution to the global housing crisis. A couple of months before they’d made a £1.7K loss on a sold out, one-off show in Dublin. Both decisions would, you would assume, have been at least challenged by any external presence with a cut to take. The way that they operate now means that the band know they never have to compromise. They didn’t want any involvement with Airbnb but they wanted to play a big show in Dublin and drink tons of Guinness, even if it meant making a loss. “We don’t get told by a manager: ‘No, you need to be making more money for yourselves,’” says Gareth. |
“A lot of people have grown up with us.” |
The culture that has been built within the band is reflected in its following, which spans generations of emo-curious misfits. It’s noticeable now more than ever that every Los Campesinos! show is packed with people who’ve lost count of the times they’ve seen the band. At the same time, there are invariably dozens who are at their first show of any kind, empowered to experience live music for the first time by the band’s policy of never playing 18+ gigs. If you put to one side the scorned ex-boyfriends who stopped liking the band after being broken up with by a bigger fan, there aren’t really any lapsed LC! fans. “A lot of people have grown up with us and have been able to really empathise with what we’re singing about,” says Gareth. “The first record is really dumb and fun and wide-eyed, and then quickly pivoting to being a bit darker on ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.’ ‘Romance is Boring’ swerves from quit depressive songs to just mad, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ stuff. ‘Hello Sadness’ is the big sad breakup album, ‘No Blues’ is the beginning of us being more independent and sort of feels like adulthood and ‘Sick Scenes’ is like the depressive thirty-year-old one. Right up until ‘All Hell’, I think a lot of people feel like they’ve been experiencing what we’re singing about.” |
There are a few other theories to put forward on why LC! have carried such a large part of their following through with them for two decades, as well as adding a much younger contingent in recent years. Firstly, they’re a pretty cheap band to like. Tickets for the upcoming ‘Vicennial Cringe’ tour are £22.50 (£27.50 in London) with 5% made available at a much reduced rate of £8 for fans who might not otherwise be able to attend. The band also make sure that there’s always at least one t-shirt option on their website for less than £20, with a couple available for a fiver at the time of writing; if you’re struggling with money but a huge fan of the band, you could buy a t-shirt and go to a show for £13. Lowering that financial barrier to engage with them in a more meaningful way than through streaming is invaluable in building that longer term bond. Their inclusivity goes way beyond that as well: merch sizes are always inclusive, all the venues that they play are accessible and at least 14+ if not All Ages, end times are provided way in advance to allow fans to make travel arrangements, and shows are explicitly labeled as a “safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, race, sexuality and religion.” |
The fact that the band are so willing to share intimate details about the way they operate financially and logistically surely adds to the endearment too. The joyful naivety of their early years is reflected in the doe eyed music they were putting out at the time, but they’ve paired sonic maturity with an ever-increasing openness with their followers. If you were into twee pop in a big way back in 2006, there’s probably at least parts of the music industry that you’re incredibly jaded by in 2026. Los Campesinos! are very good at reflecting that. “We make guitar music, I’m not pretending it’s anything more than that. But we’re in a position where we can keep getting better and be relevant,” says Gareth. “I think it’s hard to be relevant in guitar music in 2026, but I think we couple that with doing things differently: being transparent about the industry and trying to cultivate a more equitable live music scene.” It’s also true that being in Los Campesinos! is as much fun as it has ever been, which certainly helps to keep people around. “We’ve always been a large group of people. I think that sense of camaraderie between us in performances or even promo pics is something that people feel involved in. I think it makes it easier for people to feel like one of us, which is exactly what we want it to be.” |
As conversation horseshoes its way back around to the upcoming tour, there’s a palpable sense of excitement that transcends the video call format. There are some cool ideas in the camp for these shows, including trying to get photos of fans in each of the 97 t-shirts the band have put out over the last twenty years. Tasteful glances back at their past will be much appreciated by fans, but the focus of the band is firmly on the future. The anticipation of these shows specifically is less the point, more central is the enthusiasm to just keep being in Los Campesinos! To keep playing Los Campesinos! shows. To keep picking away at exploitative industry practices and building a more equitable, more inclusive and more financially sustainable vision of how a band like theirs can operate in 2026. |
They put it best themselves when they first announced the tour: “No victory laps, just an endless winning streak.” |
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