Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura
My Maudlin Career
(4AD, 2009)

I don’t like this as much as Let’s Get Out of This Country, but I don’t know why. Is it not as good, or have I just listened to Let’s Get Out of This Country too many times, in too many private moments, for it to be displaced in my affections by a new toy?

I talk about affection, and I indulge in the first-person, because there’s something very personal about Camera Obscura. Tracyanne Campbell’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics and breakable vocals; the cozy arrangements and production betraying a deep fondness for earnest ’60s pop—no accident that their best song references an old English popster and admits, “I’m ready to be heartbroken.” They’re the kind of band you feel protective of, and that type of intimacy and need leads to a very close sense of emotional communion.

What’s weird about My Maudlin Career, the Glasgow group’s fourth long-player, is that Camera Obscura seem to not only know the kind of relationship they have with their fans, but seem to be in command of the relationship.

“Spent a week in a dusty library” is the first thing out of Campbell’s mouth on the first song, “French Navy”—so far, so introverted. But it goes along with the heavy thump-thump that starts the song off, and wait for the toe-tapping strings (yes, really), and practically Love-like horns on the chorus. “I wanted to control it / But love, I couldn’t hold it”—is Camera Obscura getting frisky?

On “The Sweetest Thing” (aww!), an organ matches all-together-now “ooh”s and swooning strings; Campbell sings about “try[ing] to fall out of love.” But then… “You challenged me to write a love song / Here it is, I think I got it wrong.” Here, and in the wall-of-sound title track, with its long build and one-time-only choral chorus, Camera Obscura seems to be teasing us a bit: “This maudlin career has come to an end / I don’t want to be sad again,” like Camera Obscura’s tickling their frowny persona.

The album throughout is not just enveloping but actually lush, almost brocaded—never as melancholy or narcoleptic as previous outings. “You Told a Lie” begins almost a cappella, with the cloying couplet, “If you were a season, you would be in bloom / I wish I had good reason to see you soon,” but improves thanks to the flowery, slightly poolside feel of the strummy, Spanish guitar figurations—a frequent presence on the album, as are the muffled drums. (See also “James”, featuring warm-bath synths, and telling the story of a missed connection between exes.) It’s as if they’re gilding their own lily a bit, because they know they can.

Like, dig: It’s hard to tell what the saddest line on “Away with Murder” is: “How many times have you told me you wanna die?,” or “I’ve been lonely too, like you, I’m just like you,” or (my choice) “It’s a February night, and I don’t want to feel anything.” But Campbell seems, if not upbeat, at least confident—sensitive and wounded, sure, but also asserting—in her voice’s smooth-bottomed lower registers, her connection with her listeners. “Careless Love” is sort of a ballroom dance (there’s a string section throughout the record, but this song is the string section), but saved from the skip button by the way Campbell holds off on the last word or phrase of the most emotionally open lines—she gets your attention and leaves you space to jump in and sing along.

“Forests & Sands”, with its muddy blues and higher-pitched backup vocals, is basically Cat Power’s “The Greatest”, and the analogy’s appropriate—like a less (self-)destructive Chan Marshall, this is an album of performative mood swings. The album closes with “Honey in the Sun”, all swingadelic horns, practically Motown-by-way-of-“Waterloo”, and the choral lament “I wish my heart was cold / But it’s boiling.” The girl can’t help it—but she kinda knows it.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Tags: Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career, 4AD