Los Campesinos! Leader Gareth David on How to Survive Indie Rock With Your Dignity Intact
Eighteen years into their career, the UK indie lifers are enjoying their greatest successes while remaining truer than ever to their DIY principles.
When Los Campesinos! frontman Gareth David goes to pick up toilet paper and kitty litter at his local supermarket, he often bumps into a guy who works there, whom Gareth has known since their school days. The conversation tends to go something like this:
Supermarket Guy: [slightly demeaning tone] “You still in your band?”
Gareth: “Yeah, yeah.”
Supermarket Guy: “You off on tours?”
Gareth: “No, we’re not really doing anything at the moment. We all got other stuff going on.”
Supermarket Guy: “Oh, OK.”
And that’s about it.
But one day this summer, following a sold-out U.S. tour and the release of All Hell—the seven-piece band’s seventh album, and their first in seven years—Gareth had a better update. He practically cut off Supermarket Guy’s usual questions, blurting out: “Actually our new album debuted at No. 14 last week, between Noah Kahan and Abba Gold!” The guy remained unmoved by the news, but Gareth walked away with a little vim in his step all the same.
The 38-year-old singer recounts this small glory near the start of our three-hour talk, during which he’s characteristically transparent as he touches on everything from the financial realities of touring to the values that drive the group’s DIY approach to his complicated relationship with a new generation of fans. He’s sitting in his home in the sleepy English town of Midsomer Norton, where he lives with his wife and their big-eared cat, Mildred; as the evening sets in, the daylight pouring through a window behind him slowly fades away.
He’s not exactly a chart obsessive, but he takes pride in notching a new peak for Los Campesinos! on the UK albums tally nearly 20 years into the devoutly independent band’s existence. (The group’s only other appearance came when their first LP, the tweecore opus Hold on Now, Youngster…, made it to No. 72 in 2008, on the heels of their breakout indie hit “You! Me! Dancing!”.) All Hell’s impressive chart bow was spearheaded by actual sales, including CDs, vinyl, and downloads, rather than streaming; fans purchased a total of 1,767 vinyl copies in particular, making it the fourth-most-popular LP of that week.
“Being on the chart is nice, and we wanted to achieve that, but success can mean many different things, and we’re successful in ways that aren’t quantifiable in terms of sales or popularity too,” he says. All Hell is the first Los Campesinos! album that’s self-funded, self-produced, and self-released on the band’s own Heart Swells label. Adding to their DIY bona fides, the band is also self-managed, with Gareth handling the bulk of day-to-day accounting and admin duties. They’re already using that control to pay their recent victories forward, donating £12,000 to causes including trans rights and medical aid for Palestinians. And they are adamant about keeping their gigs affordable, going as far as offering discounted tickets so that unemployed and low-income fans can make it out. In a music industry dominated by cold-hearted streaming goliaths, money-hungry monopolies, and imperial superstars, the scrappy septet’s triumphs are especially worthy of celebration—and, perhaps, replication by other artists in search of a more humane path.
