Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career

The smooth with the rough

People often tar Belle & Sebastian with the “fey” brush. Granted, some of their early stuff was, but that’s not a patch on Camera Obscura. Whereas Glasgow’s finest sons seem to have diversified into a kind of T. Rex-lite, these Glasgwegians continue to plunder the same 80s/60s fusion – but it’s only half ineffective.

This, their fourth album, finds producer Jari Haapalainen (he of Peter, Bjorn & John fame) at the helm, and it’s a masterly job he does. Sadly, you’ll only really need an EP’s worth of this simply-chorded, reverb-heavy melancholy to get the point. The sound is strongest when lost in whimsy, as on tracks Other Towns & Cities or James. Lead single French Navy sets the template for the rest of the tracks, though, all too easily fading into one. Singer Tracyanne Campbell’s voice retains its alluring coquettishness on pretty much all of MMC, but what she says is too easily forgotten, blurring into a haze of vintage guitar amps and shuffling rhythms.

Camera Osbscura might well have made their best record here – using “record” in the 45rpm sense of the word. Their slowest songs are the most deadly. It’s just a shame they’re buried among all the other roughage.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

4AD | CAD 4907 CD

Reviewed by Jake Kennedy
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