Camera Obscura Live in Toronto

Frank YangOn Saturday night, I headed over to Lee’s Palace to see Camera Obscura – a band I’d already seen live some half-dozen times. Considering that even the most generous fan would be hard-pressed to call them an especially dynamic live act, you might rightly question why I keep going back rather than try something new. To that, all I can say is “I don’t know” and “I like them”.

It also helped that this was their first time back in town since August 2007, their final show in support of Let’s Get Out Of This Country, and they were playing a room half the size of that show despite having released maybe their best album yet in My Maudlin Career. Country had been a definite breakthrough record for the Scottish outfit, shedding once and for all the Belle & Sebastian comparisons by adopting a more Motown-influenced attitude, but while it had a brace of killer singles, across the whole record it sometimes lagged or drifted back into more familiar musical postures. Career’s highlights don’t quite hit the same heights as its predecessor, but it’s a much more consistent record top to bottom. The band sounds much more comfortable in the richness of their sonic trappings but most importantly, Traceyanne Campbell is doing something different with her voice. It’s still wearied and lovely as ever, but there’s something in her inflection and phrasing on this record that ratchets up the emotional quotient significantly. It’s a little thing, but it means a lot.

Read more at Chromewaves →

Photos: Camera Obscura, Anni Rossi @ Lee’s Palace – June 27, 2009
MP3: Camera Obscura – “My Maudlin Career”
MP3: Camera Obscura – “Let’s Get Out Of This Country”

Clash has an advance sneak peak/listen to Forget The Night Ahead, the new album from The Twilight Sad, due out September 22. The new single “I Became A Prostitute” is streaming over at their MySpace.

NME has a Glastonbury-themed interview with Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos.

They’d already played a number of warm-up gigs, but Glastobury was really the first big Blur reunion show, and by all accounts they utterly killed it. A good portion of the set was broadcast on the BBC and Deaf Indie Elephants has pointers to where you might be able to hear it. And if that doesn’t work or just isn’t enough, Pitchfork reports that the band’s shows in Hyde Park this week will be recorded and released as a live record about a week after the shows are performed.

As part of their “alt.country” week, Drowned In Sound contemplates London’s alt.country scene, which with players such as Lightspeed Champion, Emmy The Great and Laura Marling, looks (and sounds) an awful lot like what they were calling “anti-folk” last year.

- Frank Yang