BY WYNDHAM LEWIS

Cataloguing the similarities between the two bands plying the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on February 13: youth, enthusiasm, critically fawned over, loud, and a misleadingly foreign sounding name - Titus Andronicus (Latin) - Los Campesinos! (Latin American) you would think there would be a match made in heaven.  Strangely though, the double bill was a bit of a mismatch with the undercard scoring an unexpected TKO of the more popular headliner. 

On record, Titus Andronicus' singer/multi-instrumentalist/band leader Patrick Stickles is compared often and fairly to Conor Oberst, with his suburban boy wounds chronicled by his angsty/vulnerable words and voice.  But in the throes of performance he actually has more of a Joe Strummer rasp and it works with the intensity of the songs particularly when the backing vocals pick up in  songs like ‘Arms Against Atrophy' and ‘Upon Viewing Brueghel's With the Fall of Icarus' evoking the Clash with at least a Rancid level shout along. 

The singer's insistence in telling the audience about 143 times that his band is from New Jersey was less the typical Boston vs. New York baiting that many resort to when in town and more an indication that Stickles repeats himself when he drinks.  It also laid the groundwork for a rousing mid-set rendition of a well chosen cover of Springsteen's "Badlands". 

Toward the end of the set was a little more banter involving the Garden State and more specifically their Bergen County hometown and it was amusingly noted the band was on a tight schedule due to a pending interview and photo shoot with the Glen Rock Gazette (circulation 3977).  The band did, however, possess one member of the local persuasion, the appropriately named Ian O'Neil, and as a tribute to his hometown and his attending father Titus A. broke into "the greatest rock and roll song ever created by a Boston person."  As they banged away at the classic Modern Lovers tune ‘Roadrunner' they were hard pressed to find an argument against that claim of greatness, the band's knowledge of the classics or the idea that these guys are on the right track toward something pretty interesting.

Los Campesinos! sold out the Paradise on a frigid February night and given their recent run of national press and critical lauding there was good reason to expect a solid outing.  The band is well rehearsed and the songs are well arranged, but for all the variety of instruments and vocalists it was remarkably one note.  There were plenty of people at the show digging that note, particularly on crowd favorites like ‘We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed,' ‘My Year in Lists' and ‘Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks.'  But despite the fact that you could distinguish flourishes like plucked violin strings and two and three part harmonies, the overall take away was that the whole was somehow less than the sum of the parts.

Whereas Titus A. operated as an endearingly sloppy unit with a front man relying heavily on his band to keep him on the right path, Gareth Campesinos!, by contrast, is the only performer worth watching during a Los Campesinos!' set.  Armed with keyboards, drums, vibes and sticks with which to bang on them, Gareth is charismatic, talented, clever, high energy, entertaining and so far and away the only dynamic presence on stage that it is distracting.  It was strange that such upbeat and intricately orchestrated songs could be delivered by a young attractive seven piece band with the appropriate sound quality and volume but with such an absence of flair.  It seemed as though everyone in the band was there to watch Gareth perform as well.