|
|
|
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
| Slantmagazine |
|
The past six months have seen a wealth of blistering post-punk streaming out of Glasgow, with Glasvegas and the 1990s being two of the more notable perpetrators. Yet the city is capable of much softer offerings, as evidenced by Camera Obscura and their brand of yesteryear Americana pop. The Scottish sextet's fourth album, My Maudlin Career, is the musical equivalent of a bowling alley chockfull of orderly, milkshake-drinking youth—a sober endeavor absent of the snarky lining so common among today’s throwback set. On their last release, 2006's Let's Get Out of This Country, Camera Obscura transplanted themselves into a pop-art world full of smiling milkmen, space-race headlines, and backyard fallout shelters. Maudlin continues the sincere homage to a departed age; bittersweet and self-deprecating, the album languishes somewhere in between Mates of State's organ-driven pop and Beck's Modern Guilt. The result is not nearly as novel or dorkishly handsome as Country, but it still manages to exude addictive gorgeousness....full text |
|
|
| Themusicmagazine |
|
My Maudlin Career begins in a decidedly non-maudlin fashion. French Navy’s upbeat Phil Spector-esque echoey snares and strings accompany Tracyanne Campbell’s excited introduction: “Spent a week in a dusty library / waiting for some words to jump in me / we met by a trick of fate / French navy my sailor mate.” Like a hormonally-charged student trying but failing to concentrate on a dissertation, so the new love in Campbell’s life is undermining her attempts to put pen to paper. However, she needn’t have worried: her beau acts as the inspiration for a number of songs on the album – an album purely and simply about love. It is no wonder that Campbell and her Camera Obscura bandmates feel so comfortable with the context of love, or more precisely, a child-like, innocent love. Campbell’s soft Glaswegian accent and delicate, nasal tones suit the fragility and naïveté of a he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not sentimentality. Her witty interjections straight from the mouth of Juno MacGuff, help the subject matter from cloying the listener with sentiment and carry the songs along with a winsome breeze. Rather than rejecting the record for its mawkishness, its wide-eyed genuineness and gentle affection draws you in. Campbell’s stories and confessions convey with such truthfulness, it’s as though the listener were privy to the pages of a teenager’s diary....full text |
|
|
| Contactmusic |
| When Glaswegian folk-poppers Camera Obscura signed to independent stalwarts 4AD earlier this year, a few eyebrows were raised, possibly in shock, but also as a sign of anticipation as to where their future recorded output would take them. Although revered by the 'twee' community, Camera Obscura's folkier side has always set them apart from the likes of fellow compatriots Belle And Sebastian and The Delgados, despite the obvious comparisons, while their less than prolific release rate - 'My Maudlin Career' is only their fourth album in a career that spans over a decade - suggests they're not necessarily the easiest of bands to please, either from their own near perfectionist work ethic or record label's financial points of view....full text |
|
|
Go to "Camera Obscura " lyrics