Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career (4AD)
4/5
By: Matt Cole
BUY DOWNLOADI'm not entirely sure how or why I've managed to avoid the 10 year career of Camera Obscura but on the strength of this album I'd imagine that the usage of maudlin as an adjective in its title is meant to be taken with more than a little irony - My Maudlin Career is a capsule of gorgeousness.
The band's first album for 4AD kicks off with French Navy, a joyful piece of top notch soul that would really benefit from being heard while driving through the Pyrenees in a bright red, 60's, E-type convertible.
Camera Obscurra have laboured under comparisons to fellow Glaswegians Belle & Sebastians but it's a lazy labelling - there is a substance and confidence to these songs that Stuart Murdoch's outfit have never quite achieved for my liking.
The fact that this confidence is borne on the vulnerable vocals of Tracy Anne Campbell is a further delightful irony. Campbell looks upon this as a "dark and brutal" album but I would suspect that she's the kind of person to find the films of Wes Anderson too gritty, as there is very little consuming gloom to be found. We're not talking Leonard Cohen here thank goodness. Even 'Away With Murder' with its opening gambit of "How many times have you told me you want to die?" is buoyed along on a tune that can only be described as pretty in an Emmy Lou Harris kinda way.
That's not to say that My Maudlin Career is insipid or twee. There is the overall feeling of someone putting a brave face on an undisclosed tragedy permeating every song. Sonically, with its lush arrangements and self-assured composition, My Maudlin Career emerges as a celebration of triumph in the face of adversity. An album in possession of a solid heart that progressively reveals itself with each listen.
Artists in this article: Camera Obscura
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