Hailing from sunny Scotland, Camera Obscura have ploughed their furrow writing slightly offensive pop melancholy. Perhaps the best example of this on their debut release, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, is Eighties Fan. If you haven't heard it (and you undoubtedly have), it is probably the best pop song ever. The aforementioned melancholy runs through its string veins with the lightest of bobbing flows. An impossibly pretty and well-recorded string section (arranged by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian) provides the soul here, in a way that Tompaulin have surely learnt from and replicated. This song could mean something to everyone, such is its grace and deftness of craft. You too will think that 'life will be the death of you'. Unfortunately, having Eighties Fan as the second track on the album means that the listener is consistently under-whelmed by everything that follows it. This isn't to say that any of the material is spectacularly bad, but it inevitably fails in comparison to the glory of that one song. The album does enough to suggest that Eighties Fan wasn't a fluke (the terribly sad tale of a Smiths-obsessed boyfriend in Pen and Notebook probably comes closest), but there is a definite lack of the extreme coherence that would catapult them into the indie-pop superleagues. There are flashes of arch-knowing that take them steps closer to that special kind of personal relationship between band and listener, but there is also the feeling that they are capable of so much more. The sullen beauty of Tracy-Ann Campbell's voice could be the charm that wins the day with the casual listener, but the longevity really needs to come from the songs. A fine testament to the influence of Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura could be something pretty special if they get out of first gear.
Daniel Ross
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