“I Broke Up in Amarante”

Few besides Los Campesinos! could pull off a melodramatic line like, “It seems unfair/To try your best but feel the worst”—and only LC! could turn it into a shout-along chorus. “I Broke Up in Amarante” is the band’s incendiary return after three-and-half years away. Here, they wisely trade out the synth swell of 2013’s No Blues to revive their high speed indie rock. The move magnifies the despair in Gareth Campesinos!’s vocals as he unrelentingly spins a very-Gareth tale of trying to use beer to cope while suffering from mental torment in a tiny Portuguese town.

Stories of breakdown and alcohol-induced vomit are not unfamiliar territory for Los Campesinos! (Hell, those very topics produced one of their best songs, “Miserabilia,” back in 2008). However, even as the band manages to cram this song with some 20 different hooks—from Tom Campesinos! zig-zag guitar riffs to Kim Campesinos!’s sugary vocals taking over at the end—it’s not enough to hide the grief of “I Broke Up in Amarante.” Los Campesinos! have never shied away from pain, but there is something rawer about it here. It is a screaming affirmation that your demons are truly inescapable, no matter where you are in the world.