By Max Hill
Camera Obscura — Desire Lines
On their fifth release as a group, Camera Obscura have their shy, nostalgic twee pop aesthetic down to a science: each one of their records have seen the group capitalizing on their ‘better to have loved and lost’ balladry and tender guitar work, all brought home by Tracyanne Campbell’s clear-cut, subtly Scottish vocals.
Where some bands seek to chart new territory with each release, Camera Obscura are content to hone their craft. Borrowing from twee titans Belle & Sebastian and Heavenly and spinning lyrical webs of literary lovers and youthful rebellion, the Glaswegian group seem to improve with each release.
Desire Lines continues this trend, improving on 2009’s My Maudlin Career with catchier hooks, sweeter swan songs and stronger wordplay than ever before.
Album highlights “Cri Du Coeur” and “Desire Lines” are among the band’s strongest tear-jerkers: both hinge on Campbell’s impassioned delivery and charming but not contrived lyrics. On the other end of the spectrum, the summery guitar licks of “Everyday Weekday” and horn-bolstered chorus of “Do It Again” could challenge the band’s most muscular pop hooks.
To be fair, Desire Lines does have a learning curve: early tracks “This Is Love (Feels Alright)” and “Troublemaker” are among the most lethargic on the album, and on initial listen had me worried that the album might break the band’s decade-long winning streak. Fear not, prospective listeners: after a slow start, the album finds its legs with the lovely synth-led “William’s Heart.” It’s all uphill from there.
Though the group’s best songs appear elsewhere, their elegant approach to songwriting has never been more consistent or focused. Camera Obscura are firing on all cylinders, and Desire Lines sounds like nothing less than the work of a band at the top of their game.
Baths — Obsidian
Obsidian is the second album by Will Wiesenfeld as Baths, but for those who’ve come to know the artist from his 2010 debut Cerulean, it’s barely recognizable. The album’s opaque cover artwork seems to both betray and espouse the music within: Obsidian is at once a much more accessible and much darker record than its predecessor.
Where Cerulean was a glitchy, experimental album with a happy-go-lucky tone, Obsidian is a collection of pop songs about death, meaningless sex and apathy.
Recuperating from a battle with E. coli which stifled his songwriting abilities, Wiesenfeld channeled all his frustration into his lyrics, which are disturbing to say the least. The album opens with a vocoder drone over a whispered stanza: “Birth was like a fat black tongue / Dripping tar and dung and dye / Slowly into my shivering eyes.”
Later, on album highlight “No Eyes,” Wiesenfeld waxes poetic over emotionless and non-quite-consensual sex. Not exactly congruent with the accessible, The Postal Service style electro-pop the album borrows so heavily from.
But somehow, Wiesenfeld’s disarming honesty and unsettling imagery complement the album’s uncommonly beautiful electronics perfectly. “Incompatible”’s failing relationship fable is framed behind a gorgeous aural landscape, and Wiesenfeld’s tender vocals are all the more affecting when he sings: “You don’t do anything with your life / Fascinating, terrible, your stupid idling mind / I could prod your hurt all night.”
As horrible as it sounds, E. coli might have been the best thing that could have happened to Wiesenfeld’s musical career. His brush with death has driven him towards thematic ground that few performers today are willing to explore.
His music has also undergone a parallel, but antithetical evolution: an unruly combination between sonic beauty and lexical gloominess makes Obsidian one of the most fascinating and courageous albums released so far this year.
The Velvet Underground — The Velvet Underground & Nico
Lou Reed was a former electroshock patient and occasional drug dealer who played guitar the way Ornette Coleman played saxophone. John Cale was a classically trained violist with an ear for the avant-garde. Sterling Morrison was a guitarist and reluctant bassist with a rock-and-roll spirit. Maureen Tucker was a keypunch operator who played along to the drums on her Bo Diddley records after work.
When Andy Warhol first heard these four play together as The Velvet Underground at the Cafe Bizarre in New York, he knew he had found the house band he was looking for.
He adopted them, had them play at his now-legendary studio The Factory, and his celebrity status gave them the creative freedom they needed to create one of the most audacious, unconventional albums of all time.
The Velvet Underground & Nico is an album about drug use, BDSM, prostitution and race, played by a band with no FM radio aspirations. The music is loud and unconventional, bathed in reverb and tape hiss, and it sounds like a live recording. Though Warhol is credited as producer, the real praise belongs to John Cale and engineer Norman Dolph, whose mixes range from the tense and claustrophobic to the lush and elaborate.
Warhol’s biggest contribution to the album was persuading The Velvets to allow German-born fashion model-turned-singer, Nico, to join the group. Her rich, enunciated vocals give gravitas to songs like “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Femme Fatale,” inspired by Reed’s experiences with Warhol’s flamboyantly Bohemian social circle.
The album’s standout track however, is its seven-minute centerpiece “Heroin,” which is still one of the most compelling and moving songs ever written about drug use. Tucker’s drumbeat and Reed and Morrison’s twin guitars wax and wane to mirror the experience of a heroin high. Other songs like the viola-led “Venus in Furs” and barrelhouse-piano “I’m Waiting For the Man” are among the best the band ever wrote.
Although it took decades for The Velvet Underground & Nico to earn its deserved “essential” status, the album’s daring subject matter and experimental soundscapes still have the power to thrill new listeners. Few albums have had this much influence on music, and for good reason.
