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.
Lander: I‘m a total sucker for Southern Gothic novels, and this is one of the best. Dark, claustrophobic and awkward, with a cast of creeps who lurk on in your subconscious in a disconcerting way. I’m fascinated by its theme of religious struggle and delusion; the grotesque backdrop of the book provides a vivid glimpse into something that’s often uncomfortably close to home. The 1979 film directed by John Huston is pretty faithful to the book and also worth checking out.
Video after the jump.
