Ebullient pop-rock band Los Campesinos! probably isn’t the first source you’d think of for a down-tempo, reflective, acoustic-driven ballad. But that’s what the group delivers on “The Fall Of Home,” the new single from the forthcoming album Sick Scenes, due out February 24 on Wichita Recordings. Coming right around the midpoint of the new record, the track finds singer Gareth Campesinos waxing poetic over the nature of leaving your former home for a new place, but without any guarantees things will get better. “Left your hometown for somewhere new / Don’t be surprised, now it’s leaving you,” he sings, as the spare guitar is joined by strings, keys, and a lonely tambourine. Gareth says this about “The Fall Of Home”:
This is an elegy to the home towns left behind. It’s about the villages too stifling to ever allow you or itself to flourish. About those who left to protect their mental health or to be the best version of themselves. To those who moved to the city and return “home” for Christmas and funerals, feeling like a tourist. For the lonely people in rented house shares with no idea what they’re doing. And it’s for those who didn’t want to or couldn’t leave, and are still hanging in there.
The song works perfectly as a feel-bad anthem that nonetheless captures that satisfying sense of uplift that comes from acknowledging a bad situation—and gets it all done in under three minutes. You can pre-order Sick Scenes now from the band’s website. Plus, the band is launching a U.S. tour—its first in years—starting next week, and tickets are now available.