Los Campesinos!: Tiny Desk Concert
Advisory: This performance contains language not suitable for all audiences.
Set List
"A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State; Or, Letters From Me To Charlotte"
"Straight In At 101"
"The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future"
We've all been seen links marked "NSFW" — "Not Safe For Work" — to warn of content we don't want our coworkers to see us watching, usually because it contains nudity, violence or bad language. There's no nudity or violence in this performance by the whip-smart U.K. band Los Campesinos!, but the group's bawdy, often sexually suggestive lyrics make this the closest we've come to a NSFW Tiny Desk Concert.
That, of course, leads to an obvious question: Can a concert be NSFW if it's performed in an office? Frontman Gareth Campesinos doesn't often swear here, but we still found ourselves cringing on behalf of the 10-year-old Time For Kids reporter in attendance. (Sure, kid, come to this one and not "Weird Al" Yankovic.)
Los Campesinos! usually performs with as many as eight members — the group needs that many to reproduce the mightily clamorous ruckus heard on its records — but only four Campesinos are present here. The resulting high-wire act may have been nerve-wracking for the band ("It's easier to hide deficiencies with eight than it is with four," Gareth says), but it really brings out the group's brash, wordy, fearless wit.