Camera Obscura, 6/22 @ TLA

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Camera Obscura, 6/22 @ TLA

POSTED: Friday, June 26, 2009, 7:29 PM

Filed Under: Music Show

photo by Fiona Diffley/camera-obscura.net

Beautiful misery and hopeless romance.

It's always sunny in Philadelphia, and on Sunday (the most sunful day of the year) the Philly-based dream-pop act A Sunny Day in Glasgow played a show at the World Cafe. Actual Glaswegians Camera Obscura, however, showed up here on Monday, when it rained (a little), and their disposition was a tad shy of sunny, if not exactly dour. CamObs are a band that thrive on beautiful misery and hopeless romance, but their manner of wallowing is far from messy. In fact they're punctilious: they took the TLA stage at 9pm precisely, and spent the next hour (plus a tennish-minute encore) giving us robust renditions of their sturdily-crafted, starry-eyed indie-pop charmers. They're lovably demure onstage, shy retirers typifying UK twee to a tee (albeit, in the least ostentatious way possible), as led by head crooner/swooner/moon-june-spooner Tracyanne Campbell, in a frockish plum dress with a discreet bow in her hair, softly admonishing herself for making a bad joke. The crowd felt just as charmingly congenial, peppered with well-turned-out lads and lasses in button-downs and nifty print dresses, not so much prep-school or thrifty-hipster types as just normal, polite, nice-looking folks.

This reviewer was not quite so fastidious: I arrived as they wrapped up their opening number, the song that gives their latest lovely LP, My Maudlin Career, its winkingly apt title. But missing a song or two is little worry; Camera Obscura's quietly-achieved status as one of the very best indie pop outfits of the decade is based as much as anything on dependability and consistency: that is, their songs all sound the same, but in a way that makes you wish there were even more of them. Actually, they don't all: there are the (musically) upbeat numbers (like the Motown-ish "Honey In The Sun" and the dynamite new single "French Navy," which should have got more people dancing than it did) and then there are the all-out weepers, arguably the band's greatest fort'. They kept those to a minimum last night, perhaps in part because the absence of a string section would have robbed "Careless Love" of its ineffable climax (the new album's single greatest moment); but they did pull out the exquisitely melancholic 'oldie' (and my personal favorite) "Books Written For Girls."

There's sometimes the danger that the world-weary love-sickness of their songs translates into a lack of onstage energy, and these guys are hardly the most enthusiastic performers around. (The set's high-point showmanship-wise came when the percussionist/trumpeter wandered over to bash at the drummer's cymbals for a while during "Teenager.") After a particularly heartfelt round of applause following their set, the band returned the stage with Campbell offering a particularly undemonstrative "thanks very much, we really appreciate it." But when the encore consisted of three utterly impeccable songs (the two modern-classic singles from their last record, followed by its cozy crowd-pleasing closer), performed with such poise and understated polish, it was hard to want for anything more.

set list:

My Maudlin Career
Swans
Tears for Affairs
The Sweetest Thing
James
Teenager
Eighties Fan
You Told A Lie
Books Written For Girls
Honey In The Sun
French Navy
Come Back Margaret
If Looks Could Kill

encore:

Let's Get Out Of This Country
Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken
Razzle Dazzle Rose

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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