Plumbiferous Media

Cam­era Obscura, formed in 1996, is one of the for­mi­da­ble body of indie bands from Glas­gow dis­tin­guished by a soft, emo­tive tone of music (though many of these bands have rejected the term, think twee). After three well-received albums, includ­ing the excel­lent Under­achiev­ers Please Try Harder (2004), Cam­era Obscura has just released their newest LP, My Maudlin Career, which not only reserves the del­i­cate, well-loved aspects of Cam­era Obscura’s sound but devel­ops it into an even bet­ter fourth album.

Tra­cyanne Campbell’s voice has always been espe­cially unique, and has played a large part in help­ing to define Cam­era Obscura’s music. On My Maudlin Career, Camp­bell is as strong as we’d expect. Begin­ning with the excel­lent sin­gle, “French Navy,” Campbell’s voice rings out - force­ful, plain­tive, and dynamic - and utterly indi­vid­ual. The instru­men­tals of My Maudlin Career accom­pany her soft, nuanced vocals expertly, pro­duc­ing a well-composed, buoy­ant and yet ethe­real feel­ing to the album. Though it is true that Campbell’s voice rarely shifts from its small com­fort range, and the vocals are occa­sion­ally accom­pa­nied by odd effects, they remain incred­i­bly pleasing.

As usual, Cam­era Obscura has writ­ten a set of excel­lent lyrics for My Maudlin Career that are fun­da­men­tally sim­ple and yet both heart­felt and emo­tion­ally com­plex. As Camp­bell sings of the “French Navy” on that track, she illus­trates a col­or­ful and yet melan­choly love story. My Maudlin Career is filled with such lyri­cal con­struc­tions, from the numb “Feb­ru­ary night” of “Away with Mur­der” to the scorn­ful “You say I’m too kind and sentimental/Like you could count affec­tion” from the vibrant, tur­bu­lent title track. Camp­bell expresses the emo­tions inter­twined within each track melod­i­cally, as she sings “I pre­tend that my heart and my head are well,” wish­ing that “the blood pump­ing through my veins could freeze.” With these well-woven lines, the sto­ries behind My Maudlin Career become all that much more vivid.

Cam­era Obscura can eas­ily be com­pared to Arcade Fire in their large instru­men­ta­tion. The six band mem­bers play a large vari­ety of instru­ments, and the usual orches­tra­tion has at least one gui­tar, a piano or organ, bass, drums, and the occa­sional string sec­tion, brass, or har­mon­ica. Need­less to say, espe­cially with the sound Cam­era Obscura aims for, the band eas­ily cre­ates full washes. While these washes are often inter­est­ingly dis­tin­guish­able for their use of mul­ti­ple, dis­tinct, and inter­est­ing lines, they occa­sion­ally, espe­cially towards the ear­lier part of the album, fall back into the repet­i­tive, bor­ing sound to which washes are prone if the band is not careful.

What My Maudlin Career most often shows off, though, is the band’s great abil­ity to push the lis­tener just to the brink of frus­tra­tion before giv­ing him or her exactly what was needed. The first three tracks all fol­low in the eclec­tic indie ver­sion of a Tex-Mex bor­der­ing on car­ni­val genre, but “Away with Mur­der” snaps the band into a dif­fer­ent type of sound just in time. Just when one gets sick of the refresh­ing sound that was pro­vided in “Swans,” “James” light­ens up on the drums and saves the album. And of course, “Honey in the Sun” pro­vides a wel­come, excit­ing con­clu­sion to the album after the quiet “Other Towns and Cities,” which in turn res­cued the lis­tener from the dol­drums of “For­est and Sands” with its unprece­dented (for My Maudlin Career) gui­tar line.

My Maudlin Career is not a per­fect album. It includes a few mediocre tracks, some long, some repet­i­tive, and some the same as the pre­vi­ous track. But when Cam­era Obscura hit the mark, they hit it full force, and the album barely had time to suf­fer through the weaker tracks as a result. Between the usu­ally inter­est­ing instru­men­tals, the unique vocals, and the well writ­ten lyrics, Cam­era Obscura man­aged to turn out quite a well-made album.

This post is tagged 80-89, Camera Obscura