Camera Obscura has been perfecting its patented brand of bittersweet, lovelorn baroque pop over the course of four albums now. And after an almost four-year layoff, the band is back with Desire Lines (4AD), and it’s really rather lovely. Tracyanne Campbell talks of getting out of the band’s collective comfort zone by using a new producer, Tucker Martine (Spoon, R.E.M., My Morning Jacket), as opposed to Jari Haapalainen, who’d worked on its two last albums. But those fans suddenly fearing a startling left turn in the group’s sound can rest easy—there are no ill-advised forays into po-faced, chin-strokingly self-conscious experimentalism here. If anything, Desire Lines is a refinement, a lusher, perhaps more fully realized take on the perfect pop of Let’s Get Out Of This Country and My Maudlin Career. Camera Obscura—Campbell, Gavin Dunbar, Carey Lander, Kenny McKeeve and Lee Thomson—will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on them.
Dunbar: This year is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, a British sci-fi serial about a time-travelling adventurer, careering through all of time and space in a ship that’s bigger on the inside and looks like an out of date Police box. Since 23rd of November 1963, 11 actors have played the lead role and battled many alien adversaries over the years, saving the underdog and saving the day. Still going strong here in the U.K., and now reaching an increasingly large audience in North America through BBC America, the program is going from strength to strength and with a new actor (as yet unannounced) set to take over from current incumbent Matt Smith for the 2014 series, it’s all about to get even more exciting. Worth checking out current series, and some really great classic adventures are available on DVD also. There are even new books being written by sci-fi luminaries including Michael Moorcock and Dan Abnett.
Video after the jump.
