Description
Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album byCamera Obscura, is a revelation. TheTracyanne Campbell-led outfit, reuniting with producerJari Haapalainen(Lets Get Out of This Country,My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.
It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscuras career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friendCarey Lander(to whom the penultimate track Sugar Almond is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part ofBelle & Sebastians 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow.Donna Maciocia(keys and vocals) joined founding membersKenny McKeeve(guitar and vocals),Gavin Dunbar(bass), andLee Thomson(drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbells.
Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote Bohemian Rhapsody,Look to the East, Look to the Westfeels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscuras sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basicsthere are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera Obscuras baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have never been more apparentguitars shimmer into the distance, keys haunt, and Campbells voice searches for the heart, reflecting on love, loss, and the passage of time.
Lead single Big Love relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. Its a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with Campbells uncanny ability to render the past: It was a big love, she said / Thats why it took ten years to get her out of her head, she begins.
Look to the East, Look to the Westis the sound of a band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than ever. It is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative, an album that completely rearranges the listeners emotional core, leaving them sad and exhilarated at the same time. Camera Obscuras catalog is replete with songs people point to as life-changing, songs that will stick with them all their lives.Look to the East, Look to the Westhas 11 of them; take your pick.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.