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Swans
Artist: Camera Obscura
Album: My Maudlin Career
Year: 2009
Similar to much of the excellent music coming out of Scotland recently, Camera Obscura mixes upbeat music with lyrics exploring the sharp jutting angles and dark corners of relationship failure. Although their specific style is markedly different to, say, Frightened Rabbit, the happy/sad dichotomy is just as effective. Taking cues from ’60s doo-wop, and with lead singer Tracyanne Campbell’s trademark lilting voice, the forthcoming “My Maudlin Career” is a solid improvement on 2006’s “Let’s Get Out of This Country”.
“James he came to the door, wanting to know for sure why love gets up and goes”, she sings on “James”. Elsewhere, against a backdrop of one of the sunniest, most cheerful melodies this side of Jamaican roots reggae, she laments “I’ve been spending half a year in a plane going up and down / and you’ve been seeing other people from a nearby town / being obsessive and getting depressed about us”, before detailing her failing struggle to build walls: “I’m in training to become as cold as ice / I’m determined to protect my feelings”.