Camera Obscura The Thekla, Bristol 25/10/09
4/5
By: Sian Norris
Camera Obscura have long been one of my favourite bands, so it was with much excitement that I trooped down to the Thekla boat (a boat – it’s a boat!) to hear their perfect mix of schmind and sixties girl group sounds on the stage.
The gig did not disappoint. Tracyanne’s voice can be both earthy and ethereal, lilting and celtic, and yet, of course, reminiscent of sixties girl groups in the upbeat tunes of the songs. The band were joined on stage by old Bristolian/French friend Francois, who has toured with the group previously and has made a name for himself in my city and beyond playing trumpet, singing whispery and tender tunes and creating intricate and unusual animation films with fellow Stitch Stitch label friends. It was great to see the band hooking up with him again.
The gig offered a range of songs from their career, including recent smash single “French Navy” which seemed appropriate seeing as we were on a boat, if not exactly a navy ship. Because the band have such a distinctive sound, and Tracyanne’s voice is so instantly recognisable, the band are really able to play around and push the boundaries on their vintage pop ouevre, allowing the records to all have an individual flavour.
Old favourites were present too, lovelorn ballad ‘Teenager’ and current Ugly Betty advert soundtracker ‘If Looks Could Kill’, as well as my personal stand out track of their career, ‘Let’s Get Out of this Country’ and the beautiful ‘Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken’, all before finishing the encore with the understated and uplifting ‘Razzle Dazzle Rose’. I am hard pushed to find a Camera Obscura track I don’t like, and hearing such dear favourites live, with the voice and instrumentation pitch perfect and imbued with the band’s personality was such an uplifting and dazzling musical experience.
Like the sixties girl groups that I always come back to when listening to them, and their Scottish peers Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura’s success to me lies in their ability to write perfectly pitched, simple and melodic pop songs about the universal experiences of love, loss, friendship and missing people. The songs carry the listener along, they strike a chord with personal experience and, in their most romantic and sometimes heartbreaking moments, they make you want to grab the hand of the one you love and run through the countryside, careless of reality and bouyed up by the possibilities of the future. Watching them, you can’t help but be caught up in the enthusiasm, a sense of daring and life love, perfectly soundtracked by smooth singing and happy guitars, trumpets and tambourines.
Lovely. Just lovely.
Artists in this article: Camera Obscura
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