Camera Obscura – My Maudlyn Career

Releasedate: 24-04-2009; Label: 4AD
By: Sabine van Gameren

Camera Obscura is a pop formation coming from Glasgow, United Kingdom. “My Maudlyn Career”is their new album, their fourth one.

The album is filled with melancholic songs, a girly girl album as I have to say. Sweet, sweeter than candy. Vocalist Tracyanne Campbell surely comes with nice vocals, it’s that kind of magic that picks you easily and releases you in the web of instrumental backup. Too bad that you get stuck in that web, the songs are maybe a bit too easy. There is sometimes an overdue on the use of instruments and with these vocals it feels like you are in a dream that is so sweet that you want to get out of it. Like a gothic who is a prisoner in a My Little Pony world.
The melancholy is overdone and in their genre there have been better releases this year. It’s not horrible, but it is not an album that sticks on for too long. When the album ends my feet finally touch the ground again and my angel wings that carried me up to the clouds are vanished, get back to reality and see it as one of your weirdest dreams, an experience you can write about but later you won’t remember what it exactly was that inspired you.

If you are into these dreamy indie pop music you should buy it only when you are an addict. Otherwise, without any doubt: you will hate it!

Line Up:
Tracyanne Campbell – Vocals, Guitars
Gavin Dunbar – Bass
Lee Thomson – Drums
Kenny McKeeve – Guitars, Vocals
Nigel Baillie – Trumpet, Percussion
Carey Lander – Piano, Organ, Vocals

Links:
Camera Obscura MySpace
Camera Obscura Official