Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career

I'm surprised there isn't a lot more enthusiasm about this. The tracks I've heard so far are beautiful.

listened to it today on Spotify and was surprised how much I really enjoyed it. Saw the Channel 4 thing tonight and boy does Paul Morley love them.

it's on emusic as of today so i'll be getting it tonite i guess

i am still thinking that maybe the school's album will make everyone forget this one. maybe the problem some have with camera obscura is that they don't ever seem like they are having any fun. 'sweetest thing' is one of their best tracks ever. i am a sucker for indiepop bands doing indiepop/country then. the back end has 'james', 'forest and sands', 'honey in the sun', it's hardly front loaded.

i am still thinking that maybe the school's album will make everyone forget this one

i hope so. their singles so far have been perfect and excite me more than CO ever have, which is really saying something

this sounds really great to me but i can't tell if i'm gonna get sick of all the opulent orchestration, same thing kinda happened w/ me w/ 'night falls over kortedala'

she sounds kinda like neko case imo

I kind of love their over-the-top orchestration and when I saw the a few years ago, I thought they were far better live than I had expected. I think I'm going to see them on this tour so I should just go buy the album already.

Saw the Channel 4 thing tonight and boy does Paul Morley love them.

Just watching this just now. He doesn't half!

I tend to agree with him that it's too easy to peg them in with B&S due to shared connections, but I think B&S are fairly misunderstood and put in wrong boxes as well, so what do I know?

I haven't listened to My Maudlin Career all the way through yet. I shall do so later. I am not expecting anything groundbreaking though, so don't expect breathy pronouncements of amazingness to follow.

What channel 4 thing?

There was a 15 minute special called "A Band that Starts with C", or something like that, by Paul Morley on Channel 4 the other night about them. Basically it was him talking over clips of their videos, with snippets of an interview he did with the band thrown in.

"French Navy" is killer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IhygBvzCX8

"French Navy" is killer.

definitely

How come Gav doesn't get a close up?

He's not as pretty as Carey or Tracy.

well, i was very underwhelmed after two listens, but wowed after 5 listens and 4 glasses of bad wine.

the songs are much much better than id originally judged, even tho ive sobered up and got half drunk again.

wow i'm rather sassy on this thread

i've grown into this record but it's more that i enjoy it when it turns up in my playlist rather than seeking it out to hear it

as im not very partial to the idea of "grower" albums, this album pretty much dint get played for a month or more. but then im drinking again, riding my bike out do do some errands, and well, pretty much swooning and singing along at twilight stoplight crosswalks. so good one camera obscura.

I really haven't followed them since their first album. Are they still getting more popular? I was wondering if the move to 4ad from elefant made any difference. I bought their first single when that came out, think it was their first, has some girl in the snow on it.

yeah that's the first one, park and ride

welp they almost certainly have a bigger marketing budget on 4ad, but i have no idea to what extent that has translated into sales

I think I sort of forgot about the when Tompaulin put their lp out. Gonna grab the new one from emusic.

Just bought that. The California Snow Story cd is only one pound ninty nine too now :).

last comment for now is

i'd like to celebrate you dear,
all and all, it's been
a pretty good year

is a hard fucking knife in my heart.

i really like this cd

Listening to this reminds me how much fun mopey music can be. I haven't listened to any new Morrissey in years, but this reminds me of what I used to enjoy about his music.

I like this album very much. It's pleasant in a not-boring way.

Heard "French Navy" in a Los Angeles 99 cent store recently. This incident to be paired with the time I heard "Hey Lloyd" at a gas station in a bad part of the Valley.

Did either of these get radio play? Is French Navy a hit on Spanish radio?

"French Navy" was sandwiched between Billy Joel and Fleetwood Mac fwiw.

Do we have a thread about lyrics that hit a bit too close to home and you just have to <3 them for it? "when you're lucid, you're the sweetest thing. i would trade in my mother to hear you sing" oh my god i may have to listen to this song like a million times in a row.

<3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IhygBvzCX8

if traceyanne campbell ever looked happy while performing hell would freeze over

That's so damn true! I saw them twice a couple of years ago and she looked like she'd rather be doing just about anything else.

this is my album of the year, everyone else can go suck it.

being from glasgow will do that to you, or so i'm told.

I think that's just her face, nothing to do with her emotional state, although I'm sure the problem is aggravated hearing "cheer up, hen" a dozen times a day.

what else sounds like this? and not just lol b&s and other co albums. and is this good?

The Concretes In Colour, perhaps? Or do they count as lol other co?

co = camera obscura

will try it. loved the first record and then totally forgot they existed.

the school aren't that far removed, though they are perhaps less melancholy and more upbeat/girl group

These guys are usually pretty good live, but "French Navy" is just not the same song without the strings :(

The new one is outstanding. Maybe their best.

New year's resolution to write something of valuuuuuuuuue...."

Love it.

Is it out there now or do you have a promo copy? Can't believe it's been four years already since the last album.

has the new album leaked? "do it again" doesn't do much for me. I'll still buy it the day it comes out.

I have a promo copy. I don't think it comes out for several more weeks, but I hope people get really excited about it. It's scaled back a bit from their last couple albums, but the songs are just wonderful

There doesn't seem to be a lot of hype so far but I'm really looking forward to it. It's out on June 3rd so there is still time for people to get excited.

why be coy abt it, CaAL? tracyanne campbell has the transphobia brainworms. shit sucks.

― what followed the axes was just the beginning (cat)

Fuck! Gutted about this.

Desire Lines is great, as is this new one!

Desire Lines is great, as is this new one!

a small update on this as I’m aware some people have felt unnecessarily attacked: a lot of people don’t know about tracyanne campbell’s (now deleted) history of online transphobia (vocal support for maya forstater, e.g.) and I realise it’s not fair to tar the band’s fans … https://t.co/LlBX0UrPc1

— Robert Dallas Gray (@rdg_music) January 12, 2024

well, shit.

by the way, if you’re looking for receipts, here are some. tracyanne deleted a load of tweets in the last year or so; you’ll have to use your imagination, but it’s fairly obvious what’s going on

if Traceyanne's comments were really so alarming, then why didn't LWoB dude take the time to archive (or at least mention) the offending tweets 4+ years ago while he still had the chance? he's a legendary guitarist but his cancellation game is weak

If she's 'phobic, she sucks, but if the evidence is deleted, as RDG says it is, how can we (the we who never followed her) know? Anybody got screen shots where we don't have to use our imagination? Only other thing about I've found is an accusation on Reddit.

"only other thing about *it* I've found," that is.

Camaraderie's comment concerned me, so I poked around online. That's what I found.

I'm really hoping this somehow isn't true. This band have meant so much to me for so long. I'll definitely be holding off buying tickets for their upcoming show here in Minnesota.

yeah she was a vocal transphobe in 2019 and has since shut up about it and deleted the tweets but you can see still she follows a bunch of them on twitter. also worth noting that francis macdonald of teenage fanclub is camera obscura's manager and he used to be loudly transphobic too

rdg wasn't even on twitter in 2019 which is probably why he didn't speak up at the time but i'm glad he is now

here's people arguing in response to one of her tweets at the time:

feeling more empathy for a person getting flack online for liking *en masse* tweets in support of someone who's main thing is that trans women are men / vice versa, over trans people who have to see one of their favourite artists do this, isn't it.

— gwenth (@morverncaller) December 20, 2019

here's some of the many twitter likes people took notice of, but there's a whole lot more

https://i.imgur.com/9SGEynm.png

oh good, we can play the plausible deniability game yet again

there's no real plausible deniability here

i agree

why be coy abt it, CaAL? tracyanne campbell has the transphobia brainworms. shit sucks

yeah, i get that.

h8 when bigoted artists trying to be all tight-lipped about what they believe! it's such a crappy feeling every time it comes to light, like i was just sitting there enjoying one of my fave snacks and finally noticed the label where it says the main ingredient is rancid monkey splooge. i didn't want to be enjoying that!

yeah I've learned from experience that people don't want to know about cochineal

Personally, fwiw, it's not so much about plausible deniability, and more about expectations and how strict you want to be with the artists you follow, and how much tracking or work you are ready to do to be consistent about it. This red line is subjective. You can allow artists to be flawed, or disappointing, or bigoted, and it does not mean condoning. Or you don't allow it. In the end, I am not particularly interested in what the Camera Obscura singer thinks about trans rights, at least not any more than anyone in particular, or than any other issue. I do think it's sad if you use your celebrity as a platform to express backward views, and even more if you are militant about it. But an artist is not close enough to me for me to "take action", since I don't see listening to their next album as any form of endorsement of any of her views. Again, I respect people for whom it's a deal breaker when it comes to their attention, whether it's for being personally consistent or because they hope it will have an impact, but I don't see my role as a listener to try to vicariously shut the artist down, that would be militant work imo and more directly achieved with calls to boycott, open letters etc.

And just to say, the above is in no way meant to dismiss how trans people are feeling about artists opposing their rights, it's strictly a personal take on what a listener can/should do.

available on ltd. 'Peak vinyl'

Agree with Nabozo. Especially when the transgression here seems to be largely a matter of guilt by association.

idk what TC did, said, or posted, but I vehemently disagree with framing this as a dispute over "trans rights," unless you think the right to "be alive" or receive appropriate medical care is best understood as a civil right

^^^

i listened to the new album by the smile yesterday, made by a known israel sympathizer and a guy who is at least married to a transphobe, but i guess i rationalize that bc radiohead's music has been a part of my life for so long that i'm always going to want to hear what they're up to and i just gotta hope they fix their hearts in the background of my mind while i'm listening

it is also incredibly easy to be a human being who does not follow graham linehan or like his tweets, because he has been advocating for my annihilation for like almost ten years at this point, maybe longer?

otm, and frankly, liking a tweet is not "guilt by association," it is a public endorsement of someone's speech / viewpoint. you can argue that shouldn't matter either, but it can't be dismissed as mere association

when an artist reveals views like that, it just makes me question their entire public-facing persona, and the sincerity of their art. as if they're trying to con people into believing they're something more than basic bigots with a talent for melody. w/Roisin Murphy, it was probably even worse because her entire career was built upon this supposed embracing of the LGBTQ community, when she actually harbored these deeply ignorant ideas.

idk what TC did, said, or posted, but I vehemently disagree with framing this as a dispute over "trans rights," unless you think the right to "be alive" or receive appropriate medical care is best understood as a civil right

― rob, Wednesday, January 31, 2024 4:45 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't really know either so this was a shortcut, although you have me puzzled here. Right to life is a civil right. Health care is a social right.

Maybe this is a cultural difference, but the right to life is not a civil right in my world; it's usually framed as a natural or human right, when it's included in a rights-based analysis. Health care may get framed as a social right (though that's not a term I'm familiar with tbh), but given its direct connection to the right to life, to me it's closer to a human right.

But my point was more that this isn't a political debate over, for example, the right to not be discriminated against at work for being trans, it's a struggle against a deliberate campaign of extermination with the goal of eliminating (annihilating as ivy said) trans people entirely. IMO talking about that as "trans rights" is way overly generous to the fascists who welcome any fig leaf of respectability for their genocidal project.

Civil and political VS economic, social and cultural are the two main categories of human rights for historical reasons, since there were two blocks at the time the Covenants elaborated on the Declaration. You're right that we don't really speak like that any more and just say human rights.

The special attention granted to LGBTQ people is under the angle of discrimination because the rest (protection from threats, hate speech etc) is presumably already covered unless you live in criminalizing countries... except of course that some states have proven to fail / be complicit and then it becomes a judicial battle to enforce. But speaking of rights is still correct imo.