I ran a 10k race at the weekend. Clearly this has little to do with Camera Obscura's new LP, except to say that melodies from these songs were bouncing round my head as I ran and at that point I had only listened to the album twice. There are some seriously catchy tunes here!
Camera Obscura's fourth album is a lively mix of upbeat 60s sounding pop tunes and torch ballads. It is an almost perfect 50/50 mix. Lyrically, the album is concerned with matters of the heart, generally the bouncy, upbeat tracks document love arriving and blossoming whilst the ballads are usually 'maudlin' break up songs. Most notably, 'James' is a real heart-on-sleeve tearjerker, sung beautifully by Traceyanne Campbell, and if it is a true story, she pulls no punches. Its a song about what to do when love disappears and whether it is possible to still be friends. The answer seems to be "no". 'Away With Murder' and 'Other Towns And Cities' chart a similar course, mixing sadness with bitterness over swooning strings.
Elsewhere though, 'My Maudlin Career' is full of joyful, vibrant sounds. 'French Navy' is a stirring, buoyant account of falling in love and 'Swans' is just the catchiest thing you will ever hear; a song extolling the virtues of travelling the world, with more than one catchy melody and a central one that sounds like it should be used as the theme to a kids tv show.
The downbeat ballads probably just about hold sway, meaning that the record has a predominant sense of melancholy with fleeting glimpses of joy. The music is lush throughout though, the strings and rich vocals give the record a cinematic sound and it feels like a throwback to the music of the 60s. It feels good and it sounds great.
9.0
['My Maudlin Career' is out now on 4AD]
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