"Close comes the winter / Summer is no longer / Things seem much bleaker / We'll see a Catherine Deneuvre double feature"
Blue indeed, this album is a collection of nervous doubts, sorry regrets, candid secrets being whispered, moments of scary self-realization: the harsh truth in song. The bittersweet mood it takes on is fragile and looming, loaded with meaning and emotion, heavy as a rain cloud about to burst. Often compared to Belle & Sebastian (both are from Glasgow, where Stuart Murdoch helped arrange the strings on "Eighties Fan"), Camera Obscura can hold their own ground. This debut--a solid yet at times sappy outcry--favors the 60s-style pastiche (that to us is familiar by now) and the resulting palette of topes and tans. It would be heavenly to listen to this album in a misty springtime pasture, on a countryside walk with headphones, but it's melancholy beauty does match that of the changing leaves, the inevitable change of seasons, as most of the songs focus on the truth of relationships, between both friends and lovers: their hope and their inevitable demise.
The first track, "Happy New Year" sets the stage with "I know where I stand / I don't need you to hold my hand / I'm comin' out to take a stand / Gunna glue this together with glue and an elastic band," where their rhyming ability and sloppy lyrics are also apparent. "If I cry to set the mood, oh please could you cry too?" is a heartbreaking plea, and Morrissey fans will appreciate their wimpiness as they wipe the tears from their eyes. "Eighties Fan" is popping up as a popular pick for the year's best single, but several other tracks are not to be missed. "Shine Like a New Pin" is a flashy, optimistic number, with a nicely recycled organ riff. "Pen and Notebook" is an achingly sad and lonely farewell song: "Are the stars out tonight? / Are you watching, wrapped up cozy and tight?" The strings and trumpet perfectly reinforce the sad mood, as Tracyanne ends the song: "We're not the same / We're not the same / We're not the same." Continuing the relationship thread, "Swimming Pool" shows the childish, sickeningly-sweet, naive side that a band as emotional Camera Obscura is hiding under layers of isolation and slack. Forgetting their jaded outlook on purpose, they sing "Dont get too wise to everyone and everything, leave some room for some naivite," which is followed up with lines like "Leaving you and living a life without you is something I would never do, without you." But they soon regain their fatalistic attitude towards relationships in "I Don't Do Crowds" admitting: "I'd like to have company during thunderstorms / I'd like you to fall for me but it would soon turn lousy and wrong." Ouch. The album is filled with such painful truisms that are consoling to hear someone else experiencing, yet the final track is an upbeat instrumental, more Spring-like than Fall, more hopeful than fatalistic. To those who refrain from purchasing, you are missing out. |