Scotland's Camera Obscura bluntly defines its target audience in the title of the first song on their third album: "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken." If you were an Anglophile college-rock fan of a certain stripe two decades ago, you'll instantly recognize the allusion to the last song on Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' Rattlesnakes, and it's not at all a stretch to say that if you liked that album, Let's Get Out of This Country is tailor-made for you. Singer-songwriter Tracyanne Campbell has grown immensely in both aspects: not only is this by far the band's most richly melodic album, with strings, accordion and even, at one point, a children's choir enlivening Campbell's jangly tunes, but Campbell has matured into a truly gifted vocalist with a strong resemblance to another stalwart of the '80s U.K. indie scene, Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn. (In fact, EBTG's classic early albums Love Not Money and Baby the Stars Shine Bright are two other touchstones, especially the kicky Pet Clark-goes-Motown vibe of "If Looks Could Kill.") Swedish producer Jari Haapalainen (Concretes, Ed Harcourt, etc.) wraps the songs in arrangements that have an authentically retro vibe without being tied to any specific time period, culminating in the extended instrumental coda of the closing track "Razzle Dazzle Rose," which mixes Ennio Morricone-style spaghetti-western trumpets, Velvet Underground organ drones and a small music store's worth of hand percussion into a glorious, baroque mess. Previous Camera Obscura albums shaded just a little too far into Belle and Sebastian-style preciousness, but Let's Get Out of This Country is full-bodied, well-rounded pop.
(Release date: June 6, 2006)
