Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reverb City Queen, 10 May 2009
Four albums in and Ms Campbell and her partners in crime dig deep
and surface with a more than worthy new album - 'My Maudlin Career'.
Their music will never have the power to level cities but within the
dark shades of their craft there is more than enough original thought
to sustain our attention for the duration of these eleven fine songs.
Reverb is the whole of the law in this single-minded production.
Reverb before - reverb within - and reverb after - forever amen.
No bad thing however - more a defining weltanschauung.
Ms Campbell possesses an innate understanding of pathos.
Her voice imbues each and every one of these compositions
with layer upon layer of convincingly lacquered beehive gravitas.
By way of inspiration there is little, to be honest, to differentiate
one track from another but their collective impact is nonetheless
strangely affecting and emotionally satisfying.
Highlights include the jarringly spare "Other Towns and Cities',
sounding as if recorded at the bottom of a municipal swimming pool.
The almost-country-dance-hall lilt of 'You Told A Lie', with its
cranky and crumbly string arrangement also demands serious attention.
The jewel in the crown however is most definitely the gorgeously
up-tempo 'Swans'. Slide guitar and voice combine in a composition
of convincingly sustained melodic clout.
Close second is the downbeat, vulnerable and beautiful 'Careless Love'.
The vocal harmonies and warm wrap-around string arrangement are delightful.
Move over Glasvegas - Camera Obscura are more than worthy bedfellows.
Recommended.
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13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An exceptional voice, 21 April 2009
It is strange that a city as supposedly boisterous as Glasgow has always had a streak of unrepentant wistfulness running through its pop music. Camera Obscura are the latest in a long and illustrious line that runs back through Belle and Sebastian to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. It seems that people with floppy fringes who wish they were in an old black and white French film will still look out the window forlornly at Byres Road in the rain. Never happier than when they are a wee bit sad. And quite intelligent too. Bless.
On this, their fourth album, Camera Obscura are doing pretty much what they have always done - but better than ever. High points are the opener, French Navy, and You Told a Lie.
Tracyanne Campbell is a class act. An astonishing voice and a good songwriter with her own style and way with a melody.
The album has a big sound with horns and strings sweeping in to join the core band. This is consistent with their last album, Lets Get Out of This Country, but things are sounding a bit crisper this time and I was pleased to find the gallons of reverb that swamped the previous record are absent here. Well at least on the tracks with complex arrangements that would be muddied by them. Sparser moments are suitably echoey.
This is a great album but I am left wondering what Traceyanne might accomplish in a different setting. She seems far more talented than her band.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, 28 April 2009
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 draw 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.
Camera Obscura's quiet, acoustic brilliance - the kind you'd associate with Kings Of Convenience and, of course, Belle and Sebastian - occasionally gives way to a bigger sound. Like the blooming confidence of someone accepted by the opposite sex, My Maudlin Career is a happier record than previous efforts and more content with itself and with the world. The Sweetest Thing and You Told A Lie's summery tales of newfound love are illustrations of Camera Obscura's newly found happiness. That isn't to say the album doesn't carry more reflective moments. Insecurity, doubt, regret and loneliness also have time to creep in. Away With Murder's bluegrassy lamentation, punctuated by an eerie organ melody, is a perfect example of Camera Obscura's masterly understanding of melancholy - a quality Mazzy Star had in abundance. However, Swans' tambourines, glockenspiels and uplifting riffs quickly remind you that someone is in love around here!
The heart-crushingly beautiful James - a tale of rejection and dying love - captures the subtle, bittersweet magic of Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning. Careless Love - with its disarming crescendo of strings - unfolds its layers and leaves them at the mercy of the wind as Campbell looks to close one relationship so a new one can begin: "I've been really struggling / to think of you and I being friends / I blow hot and cold / yeah I'm like a yo-yo / so I don't think I should see you again." The album's sincerity has the effect of reminding you of your own past relationships, as you live out Campbell's trials and tribulations with her.
Camera Obscura perfect their homage to the Ronettes - and Spector in general - with title track, My Maudlin Career. A reverb-strewn piano riff pitter-patters along as bass saxophones provide the jazzy sleaze accompaniment to Campbell's, typically coy, cuteness: "You kissed me on the forehead / now his kisses give me concussion." Frustration soon works its way in, "I promise not to burden you / please let me go" and then defiance: "This maudlin career has come to an end / I don't want to be sad again." Fighting the temptation to wallow, Campbell's lyrics are reflective not only of her previously depressing love life but of the band's struggle to broaden their musical horizons and move out of their maudlin rut.
Capable of renewing anyone's belief in love, Forest And Sands is yet another highlight. Combining the child-like wonderment of Wall-E with the quiet melancholy of a Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson, Campbell sounds utterly convincing when she sings "it feels like none of this is real." As the album bows out with Honey In The Sun's merry jig, you can picture the big, happy loved-up smile on Tracyanne Campbell's face.
Occasionally shrouded in sadness but with happiness always beating from its core, My Maudlin Career lays bare the sweet melancholy of love.
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