On Monday night, it was again a total full house at Amoeba for Camera Obscura, anyway, is there a band that performs over there which doesn’t attract a large crowd? The Scottish band was playing at the Wiltern the next day, but this didn’t stop people to come in mass for their Amoeba performance.
A very pregnant Tracyanne Campbell surrounded by six musicians took the stage around 6 pm, and her very fresh and sweet voice charmed the audience during their set that largely dug into their freshly released album ‘Desire Lines’. The band looked so serious, hardly cracking a smile during the whole time, concentrated on their upbeat fast-tempo songs, which made people dance in the store rows.
I wasn’t really familiar with their music, and I hadn’t listened to the new album at all, but it was a sound hard to resist to, sweet to the core, like a candy melting in your mouth and revealing its multi-layers of sweetness. It’s a rare thing to hear a song for the first time and to embrace it as if you had heard it all your life, but it was indeed the case. Take ‘Break it to you Gently’ and its instantaneous catchiness, it was bubbly and honeyed, and it worked immediately, only ‘Desire Lines’ the title track of the album, brought a more Wilco-esque melancholic tone, but even there, the slide guitar and Campbell’s pure-bright and plain beautiful voice were ear-cotton-candies. Sure, Camera Obscura were not breaking new musical grounds, it sounded super familiar, very Belle and Sebastian, a little Rilo Kiley – especially because of this trumpet kicking up during a few songs and Jenny Lewis’ similarly sweet voice. It was a little indie pop, a little best of the 60s or other retro decade, and it was varied enough to keep me interested at each song. Their 2006 ‘Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken’ was a savant bouncy mix of Belle and Sebastian and Grandaddy (the wobbling keyboard!), and ‘Every Weekday’ had some serious exotic island guitars, making the band look like the skill orchestra entertaining a joyous cruise crowd on a Saturday night. Despite a touch of country or some island-ish shades here and there, everything stayed centered around this orchestral poppy sound.
Basically, almost all the songs were glowing with the same warm light, despite the fact that they were all about heartbreaks, which could explain the band’s uniformly austere facial expressions. They concluded with ‘French Navy’ off their 2009 ‘My Maudlin Career’ with some percussion and a triumphant trumpet, launching a romantic vibe, making people around me shout and dance, … but damn do they look serious!
Setlist
Do it Again
Break it to you gently
Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken
This is Love (Feels Alright)
New Year’s Resolution
Desire Lines
Every Weekday
French Navy