![]() ![]() It found the band no less indebted to its influences, yet strengthened by a robust new confidence. Though to give that dying horse a final trot for the sake of context, one could see Camera Obscura’s last effort Let’s Get Out of This Country as its Dear Catastrophe Waitress moment. The Camera Obscura/Belle & Sebastian comparison is at this point both tired and increasingly irrelevant. So Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion has great tunes, but what of the safe sheen that surrounds them? And Bromst is triumphant, but aren’t those now-familiar chord progressions less novel than they were on Dan Deacon’s previous LP? Where is the pioneering soundtrack to our strange cultural frontiers? These nagging questions naturally extend to a larger discussion: Is pop music’s role to provide a nostalgic retreat from the gapes and upheavals of the world around us or to push us forward into unrealized resourcefulness? Does the best music accomplish all of this at once? And if it hits a sweet spot for the listener, does that quality trump the big discussion altogether? With the timeless My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura chooses all of the above. This lack of adventure is not necessarily a barrier to greatness, though it might add up to frustrated expectations surrounding much of the year’s strongest work so far. Many of the creative departures one might have anticipated in this time of sociopolitical uncertainty have failed to appear. 2009 is shaping up to be the year of pop/rock parsimony. ![]()
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