Los Campesinos! Hold On Now, Youngster Review 3j2c51

Like giving every member of Belle And Sebastian a dangerous dose of sherbet dip and Red Bull, slinging them into a Goodies sketch and equipping them only with the day-glo painted, left-over studio equipment from a Go Team! all-nighter: This is the frenzied atmosphere of the debut album from Los Campesinos - and it’s the best shindig you’ll hear on disc all year. From start to finish this is the sound of skinny cardigans covered in sweat and breathless exclamations from a bunch of South Wales accents with choppy haircuts gone awry from sprinting in the wind.

Lead singer, Gareth Campesinos, is obviously a person who has spent the last few years filling notepad after notepad with a bunch of ink-smeared observations on the trials of indie authenticity and provincial tedium, and the result here is a collection of wonderfully literate lyrics exalting the merits of ''decorating envelopes for foreplay' in Don't Tell Me To Do The Maths and the efforts of ''just turning your pain into piety'' on the supremely garrulous This Is How You Spell Ha Ha Ha We Destroyed The Hopes And Dreams Of A Generation Of Faux Romantics.

Guitars chime with barely-tuned relish with a backdrop miasma of whatever happened to be ing the studio door at the time. It feels like an invite to a party populated by people who read as much as they groove and by the time You, Me, Dancing! kicks in you'll feel the kind of exhilaration that usually only comes with a warm can of Red Stripe thrust into your hand by an attractive stranger at a house party.

This is a record as warm, fuzzy and slapdash as a photo album of you and your best mates favourite night out. Call it bookworm hedonism if you like. Ditch your reading glasses and in immediately.