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: The Bond films of the ’60s had a great sound; John Barry‘s scores were instantly recognizable. Cool guitars and flaring brass and orchestral arrangements, which stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries. Each film kicking off with a killer theme song, and throughout the score, a selection of alternative instrumental arrangements of the song, some killer orchestral score and the sound of a decade colouring the soundtrack to an icon of the cinema. The slowed-down instrumental arrangement of “We Have All The Time In The World” is one of the most beautiful pieces of music you will ever hear. Whilst the Bond compilation albums are a great place to start, picking up the individual film soundtracks and getting stuck right into the full scores is highly recommended.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t_pg2cpps4
