Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career. All good bands must make a country record at one point in their career. This is the law. Are Camera Obscura a good band? I have, at moments of weakness, vacillated on that question. I really enjoy the first record. But then surely the School will surpass them even on their debut record? If ever they went out and made an out and out pop record it might be marvelous and joyful but as it is they semed destined to drag the anchor of soppy melancholy around their neck forever. French Navy is very smart. Very pop, lush, strings, lyrics that are vague enough to be universally sweet and uplifting even as she sounds completely and utterly defeated in the track. Jari Jalapeno will surely become the producer of choice for the kids. He made Speedmarket Avenue not be horrible, clearly this is a mark of a genius. That Speedmarket record just keeps getting better you know, the sleeper record of 2008 in some circles, I know all of you love it, sure. Second track is best. It's the mid-tempo pop number, it's genius, it shares a title with a U2 song and it's romantic and disarming. Her voice is something odd on this album. Clearly, her voice has been heavily treated. She's amped up the squeaky nature in reflection of poured forth emotions but all on the smoothed out tip. Is it because she is so terribly choked up singing these more personal laments more so than when she was on about those looks that kill and 80s fans? This is just about perfect, largely due, in my ears, to the mid-level settings on the eq, everything is set at the same level the music, the strings, her voice, the reverb, it comes off semi- Meekish, minus the hair trigger. Now the drop, it is completely obvious but still I fall hard for it as it arrives just after the string filled bridge, aaahhhh...The lyrics are a bummer even still but we don't mind. Why is she so unhappy? They've made their Payless Shoes millions and yet still they collected money from the Scottish government to record an album in Sweden. They've got naught to worry about haven't they? DId they bury their friend yesterday? have they had random strangers crash through the fence of your property and die on your property while one of tyour friends is performing CPR? Probably not. They are seemingly too overwrought to have cancer. I am terribly rude but sadness colludes with loneliness with devilish manners. I rather like this album. it might be difficult to glean that from the start of this entry. I spent this past morning acquiring the final bits of my new expensive smile. Will I smile more? I don't smile. I don't. Third song. if I could I would smile while praising this record to random strangers who don't die on my doorstep. Very country, lower, not a slowie in slowie sense but a respite from the booming production. Maybe they have a Trevor Horn record in them someday but then they don't really make physical music so what would be the point. This is lush and delicate and loud for it, but I am not convulsed by the spirit of the proceedings to move myself in embarrassingly uncoordinated movements. I was thinking of writing about this in a combined entry with the new Cats on Fire but i decided against that. It was meant to be a diagnosis of The Smiths vs. Country corollary. Were the Smiths greater than country music? Should Morrissey make a country record? Uh, yes! This is lovely things. I use the Bats as the standard for bands that don't offer much in variety by way of a recording career. I don't mean to disparage the Bats by this practice as I really do love the Bats and honestly, every record by the Bats is worthwhile. I do still mean to write about the last one. But Camera Obscura seem afforded a higher status. Sure they rode in on Belle and Sebastian's coat tails but they semed to have some sort of predestination with greatness but it still has not arrived. Not for me, not even with the revelations presented within this record. Possibly for others. Essentially these are still Camera Obscura songs, as they should be, but you know, "you're perfect, please change". Fine. As I've said, I rather like this album. But it isn't going to supplant the Giorgio Tuma record in my heart any time soon. Perhaps they should listen to Giorgio Tuma as much as I do so to see the power of making do with less, just because Mr Jalapeno can make your music sound ever more ornate and gorgeous doesn't mean the songs have proven up to the task. Another country song next, a bit Tarnation this, with the echoey whistling guitars, the hollowed out drums, her voice sung from beneath a dusty streetlight somewhere just outside Topeka. I really do not approve of the way she pronounces 'Murder' as 'mudder'. Is that Scottish being Scottish? I am Scottish. Theoretically. I say 'murder'. On the last record at this point of the record there were songs that sounded similar, the country interlude, 'Dory Previn' and 'False Contender'. Some bands seem to structure all of their records similarly. Why is this? Do they do it consciously? Two upbeat numbers, a couple of down tempo numbers, a mid-tempo single-ish thing, donwtempo to close the first side and then two more upbeat numbers, etc...do bands still sequence with the idea of sides to a record? Is this being released on vinyl? 4AD is big business now so it seems pointlessly not in the interests of their P&L to continue with such luxuries but there is the anorak contingent to consider. Some labels still release 7 inch singles, they're quaint. For my own thoughts I would venture a question--Why not just make everything digital? Am I the only one who has stopped fetishizing physical manifestations of records anyhow? I could be. Next song, a trip to the carnival, it sounds like Emily. It's filler. Will the School record be the Camera Obscura record that everyone is waiting for? Possibly. She from the School doesn't seem quite as miserable as TraceyAnne, she should still be cheered having escaped from the godawful The Loves through. I remember when first I wrote about Camera Obscura I mentioned the singer's name was Lindsay, only because that was th first name listed in the notes, back when I had physical manifestations of music to leer at, and I figured the conceit was always that the singer was first among equals. I was wrong. Was Lindsay a male or female even? i have no idea. I've downloaded the first Camera Obscura single when they had some other prominent songwriter in the band, horrid, making Traceyanne the main songwriter was the correct decision but she needs to have some pie and not make everything so heavy. Is anyone going to be singing along to this in concert? When the Payless hordes show up at the front of the stage will she be unable to restate her maudlin career because of the love radiating out from the kids who have memorized her torment down to the funny bits of punctuation. This is a very nice song, it is quite good filler. It isn't Pushkin good but, you know. Next song, But first an interruption for important news items, oh dear, The Good Fairy is on TCM on March 29th, have your DVR's at the ready friends! It's absolutely marvelous. Anyhow, this song, it's Swans, almost over. Over. Now to James, I rather like this, it's a quiet one but it feels emotional and poignant, different from most of their songs really. Normally it is merely a question of tempo to segregate their efforts but here it is a measure of temperament. I imagine it is autobiographical and it feels as if she's gutted and desperate and it's wonderful because of it. Mostly I don't care if musicians actually mean it. I've started writing songs, ha, and I don't mean anything I write. I just wanted to use the word pillion in a song. We'll be big stars in Japan and I probably will neglect this blog to the detriment of my two readers but you know I'll be off running the Akaishis with Haruki Marukami and I'll have long forgotten my life as an unread blogger/naturalist. I did spend most of the day in a library, after my smile was constructed, this music would have been appropriate really, the classic librarian;s band. But I wonder what is the point of going to a library to use your laptop? I suppose there is the free wireless network but do patrons not get roused to action by being surrounded by reams of knowledge about the known universe that you can trust, that you can touch, smell, consume at your leisure? I suppose not. I wonder how I would have been as a student in the internet age. There are loads of high schoolers in the library and they don't have a single book at arm's length but instead they have windows and cursors and the like and they have a gullibility that lends them to trust by dint of their naivety. There is this temporality to life now, so much of it is lived in the present, more than at any other time in the past. It is all so frighteningly shallow. Clearly when Camera Obscura release a record that owes as much to the 1950s/60s Nashville as to anything else it feels not just antiquated and anachronistic but inessential, disposable, and for someone else. The age of narcissism is not surely made for Camera Obscura and yet for all of the faults I am trying to find with them this song Careless Love is an effortless bit of melancholia and heartache that spins on its lovely little axis and radiates warmth and humanity and the two dimensional figures in the library could do with a little more of each. Splendidly. Now the title track. Tis was the first track that I had heard from the album and I absolutely fell in love with the music, the unease of the piano, the slow horns, the general resigned yet poised nature of the effort dazzle. But it is here where I worried over the lack of vitality, the dreariness of the vocal performance which while perfectly formed within the structure of the song makes me worry for the state of mind of Camera Obscura when while in the throes of success they have a spillover of grief to burden the listener with. I suppose releasing an understated piece of bleak personal portraiture when on the brink of "stardom" (as relative as that term may be when applied to them) is to be admired, and could be judged similar to when Belle & Sebastian released The Boy With the Arab Strap to confound the unreasonable expectations of the time. But then they grew older, they became a real band, surely Camera Obscura is already old and already serious about their career as musician and eager to stretch out. Perhaps not. I am offering only idle speculations from my cosy nest among the timid set. I love this song, it's one of their finest achievements, it's artistic and delicate and flowery and if the entire album had proceeded with that sort of broad mindedness it might have been even better served. As it is Jalapeno has done his heroic bits in shadows but the band seems mired in their comfortable heart. Forest and Sands, a mid tempo country number. The production sheen is impressive, the ambience filters everything that comes through it with a patina of aged before its time-ness and it adds a darkness to the proceedings that benefits the overall mood of proceedings. Truly, if you are not keen to the ideal of sadness this is not likely the record you will desire. It's the antithesis of the Girogio Tuma record which while even more laconic than this record has a heart full of sunshine to illuminate the world at large. There is an eerie hum to a lot of the playing, surely conjured mysteriously, these guitars are dragged slowly across a darkened sky, the drums hollow, the voice rustic. It's a marvelous record, really, I've listened now a dozen or so times and I enjoy it most of all on this current listen, more than on any of the previous listens. But I am receptive to melancholy these days having been chastened by the harshness of human existence when you are normally moored and geared to the acceptance of the status quo. This isn't a life challenging or even a life affirming record, but this doesn't meant that they have not figured it all out, sadness and cruelty reign supreme. More of the nonsense about structuring or sequencing records on this the second to last song as it is conspicuously spare and minimal, a Sun On His Back for the next generation. My friend Kate first introduced me to Camera Obscura when she put Eighties Fan on a mix-CD, just after Yukari Fresh. They've never been far from my heart since. They do deserve their success. They work hard. They write beautiful songs and seem committed to their craft and I appreciate the ethic involved but it would almost seem more noble if here at the apex of their creative abilities they took a chance and gave in to hope instead of competence. This song makes me think she'd make a fine solo record given the chance. I am not sure what the point of it would be other than to hear more songs of this sort, a single guitar, an echo of a violin and her lovely voice. Sara Lov's solo record has been revealed to the world and well it is a real revelation, dispensing with the notion of her being the plaything of some pop Svengali by virtue of being somewhat marvelous. Last song, bouncier, semi-Motown, restrained, tender. Honey in the Sun, it reminds of the first record more than either of the previous two. A bit of the I Don't Do Crowds innocence and moxie mixed in with a producer who is capable of carrying them to heights they don't seem willing to push themselves to. Anyhow, it is still really rather excellent.

Update: And now a fancy video for French Navy. Hmmm...