Los Campesinos!

'Hold On Now, Youngster...'

Wales-based whiz kids drop a sparkling, hyper-referential debut.

Spin Rating8 of 10

"Knee Deep at ATP" perfectly distills the Los Campesinos! aesthetic. Powered by careening guitar, melancholy violin, and lyrics that reference the U.K.'s All Tomorrow's Parties festival and a K Records T-shirt, the track compresses a novel's worth of indie-rock experience into 2:47. "Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)" accomplishes a similar feat, dropping Jane Eyre and the Dewey decimal system into a buzzing melody that taps both ABBA and Annie. The album is no mere spot-the-influence exercise, though. Spirited and frenetic, Hold On adds up to more than just the sum of the band's five-star libraries.

By Shannon Zimmerman

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