From The Desk Of Camera Obscura: The Laurieston Bar, Glasgow

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.

Thomson: When walking into the inconspicuous tile fronted Laurieston Bar on Glasgow’s Bridge Street, there are a few reasons that time stops: the superbly intact 1960s furnishings; the formica bar and tables; a fantastic heated glass food display (generally containing an alluring single Scotch pie); and the very friendly older barmen wearing suit trousers with white shirts and ties. When I enter the Laurieston, time not only stops, but the outside world practically disappears, so immersed am I in this soothing and agreeable atmosphere. An island of cool.

Video after the jump.