Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
This album is kind of like the last one but with all the creases ironed out. There’s no soaring pop gem like Hey Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken, nor is there anything as heartbreakingly gorgeous as Country Mile, or as gently lovely as Razzle Dazzle Rose. All you’re left with is pretty, medium-paced croon-pop no real way to latch on and fall in love.
Frankly I was afraid of this. After their last album I was so impressed that I dug through past singles and b-sides and ended up slightly disappointed. I am always wary of a group whose b-sides I don’t like, especially when they sound like a flat versions of the stuff which I do. It seems to me like Camera Obscura might just be a rather ordinary band who happened to hit a purple patch with Let’s Get Out of This Country, rather than a band who are likely to be consistently good over time, sadly. It would be nice to be proved wrong.
There are a few good moments here, though, and I bet they are still really good live. Careless Love is probably my favourite song on the album, showing what lovely lyrics they can write and just how beautifully sad Tracyann’s voice can be when she chooses. Nevertheless, this is an album whose general popularity I just don’t understand. As Tart says, it makes her long for the return of snarling guitar music. I love acoustic, folky, gentle stuff, but I’m with her on this. Records like this make me think that maybe now Mick Harvey has left the Bad Seeds, he could do worse than turn up on stuff like this and try and give it some fucking balls.
Camera Obscura – The Sweetest Thing
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Camera Obscura – Careless Love
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this is utter balls…..listen to it a couple of times last week….very weak and lacks any original ideas….next!!!!
That’s a tad harsher than I’d put it, but I can’t say I really disagree.
ive never really knew what it was people liked about this band. they are so fucking bland.
It took me a while, but I did love large parts of the first record, and they were genuinely superb live as well.
More specifically, the songs from the previous album which I mentioned in this review are amazing. There’s more on that record I like, but not really on this one, unfortunately.
completely unrelated – matthew did you ever review the phantom band debut?
did he balls.
but he may have loosened up to them a little after Homegame – sound issues aside, for there were aplenty, they did (in the words of Vic Reeves, as Tony Blair) ‘rock the shit outta ya’.
yeah definately the highlight for me. and before i saw them at homegame i had never listened to them before. very awesome though.
I haven’t heard this, but that’s too bad if it’s weak. I really enjoyed some of the tunes from that last record. The cover art seems ace. Suitable for framing.
Oh geeze, I’d better hurry and post some screaming guitars then! hehe Well hop over to YouTube and see some vintage Who doing “Baba O’Reily” cause that was my fix last night.
And thanks for the linkage, darlin … I think this Camera Obscura is pretty enough, and yes her voice CAN be quite captivating, it is just that it seems to be the style with a lot of new female voices in indie music to not be captivating. I mean is this tweeness some sort of post-emo thing? Or am I reading too much into it? Or maybe I don’t know enough about either emo or twee, for that matter. xoxo
By the way, C&B I still love you… and twitter xx
phantom band’s debut is one of the albums of the year so far……
Lovey dovey, Tartor Resartus. I’m not really a fascist. I love humanitarian commies, even though they’re stinky. And I bust on Twitter because I fear technology and don’t do anything that would be interesting enough to post. I’m 40 now, so the most compelling part of my day is the mid-morning bowel movement, after which I nap. Just not twitterable, you see.
Pshaw, you people. I love this album, and Honey in the Sun is a soaring pop gem to outstrip ‘Lloyd’ any day. That much was clear when I saw them last month.
BUT I fear I’m not among friends here, and I better beat a hasty retreat before all youse hairy arsed rockers beat seven shades of shite out of my fey indie-pop ass with your studded leather belts…
The problem is a matter of shade and tone.
I can’t fault the songs, they all sound great, the problems seem to boil down to the production which seems to treat all the songs the same. Lets put tracyann in a recording booth and turn the reverb up to 11.
It does really need Balls, it needs to be not so perfect, show some cracks and for F* sake lay off the reverb, I don’t want to listen to someone sounding like they are singing into a bucket all the time.
other than that…
Tart – I think you already know far too much about emo: that it exists in the first place. Bleh. This music is entirely unrelated to emo, as far as I am concerned.
Michael – I didn’t review it because I didn’t like it all that much, and I didn’t want to be too cool on a band when reviewing their debut release. You and DC are right though, they were very good indeed at Homegame.
Daily Growl – I’ll admit that seeing them live might sway me, as I loved them last time I saw them, but so far I am just not quite clicking with the record.
I think it is their best since the soaring strings of ‘Biggest Bluest Hi-fi’.
I think they will always bash out similar stuff. No boundaries are pushed, but to say there is no pop-gem like ‘Hey Lloyd..’?! I’m plumping for ‘French Navy’, but The Daily Growl puts his money on a good ‘un with ‘Honey In The Sun’.
Their b-sides are always crap.
On a different subject, apparently there is a vinyl shop in Herne Bay. It is called ‘B-Side the Seaside’. Just how cool is that name?!
it’s nambie pamby shite…..get over it
Fuck’s sake Tom, got an argument to make or just a big mouth?
I think it’s a great album, but I definitely preferred Let’s Get Out Of This Country. B-sideswise…well, you can’t argue with their cover of ‘Super trouper.’ As for being namby pamby…if you heard the offensive shite that is the album by the Boy Least Likely To, you’d see that Camera Obscura are Slayer by comparison.
no, no, no, Matthew, you misunderstood me. I meant post-emo as like post-punk was the deadpan reaction to punk, see? So this style of indie music that doesn’t really captivate the audience but is quite pretty nonetheless is perhaps a post-emo stage of musical history….? oh, shutting up now, I’m feeling the glaring eyes…
Tom, just come to twitter with me, darling xoxo
I am not sure that emo counts as a significant enough movement to qualify for a ‘post-’ at all.
The Boy Least Likely To – thanks for that horrible reminder of their existence Ed!
I wish everyone else on Twitter felt the same.
Quite.
Emo seems to count for a significant enough movement around scotland’s secondary schools, along with bits they have filched from metal.
Recently had a twelve year old try to tell me about Nirvana’s appearance on top of the Pops doing Smells Like Teen Spirit. Pointed out I was there and he wasn’t.
Glad you also dislike TBLLT Matthew, some folks seem to be raving about that piece of crap…
Ah well, I guess I might be becoming more and more disconnected from Teh Kidz. Mind you, even when I actually was that age I was listening to Dylan, The Band and the Pogues instead of what happened to be trendy at the time.
The first song makes me think of Cliff Richard – Summer Holiday. The second song didn’t even register. This kind of music leaves me feeling dead inside.
my argument is thus….it’s shite designer fay indie pop that missing the mark by around 10 years….they look nice tho
it gives me the boak.
Toad – i’m making the big mouth shape now…..what do i do now?
I’ve not listened to it enough to have formed a definitive opinion on it yet. It seems… alright though. It’s pretty enough and all that, but it doesn’t really have many moments that jump out and grab me. Lets get out of this country was a fantastic effort, and I don’t think this will top it
I saw them at the Barras the other night there and despite touring the new record the set was mostly LGOoTC. They played about 8 of its 10 songs…
I’m with Daily Growl and Gav here, I think it’s a great album. They seem to have made a bit of a mistake sticking all the upbeat tracks at the beginning and the end, but “Careless Love”, “French Navy”, “Honey in the Sun” and “Forest and Sands” are all bloody excellent.
hey,i liked it!
I had a poo this morning. In many ways it was similar to the one I had yesterday. It did come out a little easier, there was less residual mess & I noticed a slightly cleaner finish.
Overall, my original reaction to it was one of bemused relief + a strange mixture of functional satisfaction & fatigued regret. But, when I went back to take a better look at it, I quickly realised that it was just shit & not really worth my pondering about it.
any blood in your stool?
No. Just traces of nuts.
Significant traces of nuts.
I take it you didn’t like Let’s Get Out.. then, DC?
You know, I struggle to find owt I like by them. The only reason I’ve ever mix-taped them is because I have a friend called Lloyd & it was a CD for him.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never playlisted them because I always found/find them annoyingly smug at being quite the wrong side of wonky.
Try Razzle Dazzle Rose or Country Mile – they’re gorgeous. If you don’t like them or Hey Lloyd I reckon you’re just not going to like them full stop.