Look to the East, Look to the West

Album review

After an 11-year wait, the new album from Scottish twee-pop legends Camera Obscura feels like relief. Tracyanne Campbell's voice is as balm-like as ever on "Baby Huey (Hard Times)"—a knowing reference to the tragic frontman of Chicago R&B heroes Baby Huey & the Babysitters; blessed with divine Beach Boys harmonies, it's about how the band's fans saved them after the 2015 death of longtime keyboardist Carey Lander. Wrestling to reconcile loss and hope is a running theme. "Liberty Print" leaps from easy-listening pleasantry to a sweet bop of twinkles and burbles and radiant laser-light synth from new member Donna Maciocia, who joined after Lander's passing. Campbell wrote the song about the loss of her late brother, and it tracks both a troubled relationship ("Oh, he caused a scene on the ballroom floor/ Smashed my dream") and grief ("Oh, what a terrible waste/ Of a young man's time/ You never did find peace"). Campbell and Malciocia also teamed up for winsome "We're Going to Make It In a Man's World"; it's a little bit country, a little '60s girl-group naif—but then the lyrics sting like a bee: "The loss adjuster came to the door/ Accountability wants to know the score ... Takе your report/ Shove it right down your throat." Campbell has called it "a bit tongue-in-cheek with a serious message at its core. As middle-aged women in the music industry, are we relevant?” (Answer: More than ever.) Swoony waltz "Only a Dream" feels like a cut from a Mama Cass solo record. "The Light Nights" shuffles with Bakersfield brightness. "Denon" boasts summer-of-soul sunny guitar and keys, with Gavin Dunbar's bouncy bass almost acting as a duet partner for Campbell. There's a pair of heart-achingly beautiful piano ballads, "Sleepwalking" and "Sugar Almond"—the latter featuring an off-kilter music-box melody that suggests its tiny dancer is bent on the spring. "Pop Goes Pop" is Sundays-esque jangle-pop with sassy pedal steel, and that instrument (courtesy of Campbell's life partner, Tim Davidson) also vivifies "Big Love." Making twee honky-tonk a real thing, the song nods to Waylon Jennings and Sandy Denny, and it just shines. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz