The saccharine sweet vocals of Tracyanne Campbell soothe the soul on Camera Obscura’s latest album, Let’s Get Out of This Country, with the Glasgow indie-pop six-piece bringing their sublime melodies to New Zealand in early March. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to Campbell as Camera Obscura currently tour the US.


I SOMETIMES despair at the state of popular music when a band like Scottish outfit Camera Obscura isn’t more famous. Boasting gorgeous melodies, beautiful arrangements, intelligent lyrics that understand the concepts of irony, intertextuality and emotions, and one of the sweetest voices in indie music, it’s impossible not to be won over it. They’ve also released three excellent albums, and their latest Let’s Get Out of This Country confirms their reputation as a band who can’t write a bad song. Their previous two, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi and Underachievers Please Try Harder were wonderful pieces of indie-pop conveying singer and song-writer Tracyanne Campbell’s unique story-telling style. They’re finally starting to make people take notice, and luckily for us, they’re about to play Wellington on March 7 and Auckland on March 9.

Camera Obscura (not to be confused with a shortlived Californian band of the same name) have done well over in the US, partly due to the release of their albums by indie record label Merge. Their current tour is doing very well in the notoriously difficult US market, a market who seems to have happily embraced the Scottish six-piece. “We’re getting into it now. We’re sort of halfway there, halfway through the American tour anyway. We’ve kind of settled down now, we had a great show last night in Chicago, everybody really enjoyed it, we sold out. They’re really good to us here, we’ve been really lucky. All these places that we’ve gone to, we’ve pretty much been sold out every night. You go to a place like Kalamazoo, Missouri – a place that you’ve never even heard of – we played to about a few hundred people there. All the bigger places that we’ve been to before, the shows are getting bigger and bigger so it’s a fantastic reception, very very positive.”

Camera Obscura formed in Glasgow in 1996, a city well known for its musical history. Campbell admits that she’s never really thought too much about the support its artistic community has. “I don’t really think about it too much. It’s just the place that I come from. But there are places for people to play, there’s plenty of rehearsal space, there are lots of bands who lived in Glasgow or have come from Glasgow so yeah. It’s something I think we take for granted. I think it’s natural to do that, but maybe I don’t give it the credit it deserves.” I ask if the title of their latest album, Let’s Get Out of This Country, is to be taken literally – “partly but not exactly, I think it’s about a lot of things. It’s hard to sum up that whole album. That song’s [the title track’s] talking about grief and trying to change things that you are unhappy with and going to fix it without thinking too much about what people think. If you’re unhappy perhaps you should do something about it and change it. You’re the only person who can.”

The band received a boost when the doyen of taste, the late John Peel, became a fan. “John Peel’s one of the DJs who played our records basically when other people didn’t. He was a great support to us. We did the Peel sessions, we spent time at his house, we were very privileged to have met him, we were very privileged that he liked our group. He had a great reputation, and he still does.” He also convinced the band to put two of Scottish icon Robert Burns’ poems to music (I Love My Jean and Red, Red Rose). “I wasn’t really into the idea at first because I thought it would be too difficult, actually it was really quite easy. I just chose a couple of poems and had a bash at coming up with something. I think I wrote four melodies. It was good; it’s something I’d like to do again, the band really got into it. We enjoyed it, it was a good challenge.” In the process she became a fan of his poetry. “I was always aware of his poetry, but I got into it a little bit more after that thanks to John Peel asking us to do that. I got into his sense of the world. I was really into it for a while, I did all the places where Burns had lived and did things.”


Lyrically is one area where the band stands out. Deceptively, given their sunny melodies, their songs are often quite haunting and emotionally spare. The overwhelming lyrical focus is on relationships, mainly the tail-end of relationships and their emotional messiness. “I’m not the sort of person who thinks I must write a song about this, I just really write lyrics that come naturally to me and I don’t really think about it too much to be honest. I’m not trying to say this great big important thing, just really expressing how I feel.” There is a pretty strong contrast between the initial impression the music gives and the underlying tone of the words, but it’s not something the band forces out with their music. “Nothing’s really that contrived to be honest. I just write the words I feel like, it’s kinda like, I suppose in a sense, keeping a diary. Just to get something of your chest, you write it down. I’m quite naturally in the sort of negative, dark part of personality I guess. It’s just the music is just what comes out of us, we don’t constantly go for the light hearted melodies and dark lyrics. It’s just what happens really.”

But this aside, Campbell’s lyrics are also sharp and witty too. The first track, ‘Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken’, is a clever riposte to Lloyd Cole’s 1984 track ‘Are You Ready to be Heartbroken’. (Lloyd Cole made his name in Glasgow, and both Cole and Campbell are mutual fans of each other’s music). She’s sung about French actor Catherine Deneuve, and also singer Dory Previn. Previn lived a tragic later life, with her husband leaving her for Mia Farrow, and she was forced to undergo electro-shock therapy. “She’s a songwriter that I happen to think is one of the brilliant at the thing she does, and the point of that song was really about let’s try and do it as good as her.” And indeed, it’s one of the album’s highpoints, a lilting country-infused piece.

Camera Obscura also tour constantly, a fact that’s probably key to Campbell being able to say “I think our profile’s getting bigger and bigger everywhere.” They’ve also got a reputation for some rather winning tactics during their concerts, such as handing out fruit to the audience. “I think that’s maybe happened a few times, the fact is if we get a big rider and we’re not going to eat it all. I think that happened in North Carolina because somebody got a fruit basket, it might happen, depends on what people bring us.” Perhaps that was a subtle hint for audiences to bring some food along with them, and Campbell’s doesn’t state a preference for anything in particular. “A lot of things. I think people bought us cakes on the tour, pastries and stuff, fancy cakes arrive in the dressing room, it’s very nice that people want to do that.”

So head along when Camera Obscura tour New Zealand, armed with seasonal fruit or baking, and enjoy one of the most underrated and enjoyable bands playing at the moment.