LP - CAMERA OBSCURA (INDIE) - LOOK TO THE EAST, LOOK TO THE WEST blue / white vinyl pressed galaxy effect in a gatefold jacket with lyrics.

Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album by Camera
Obscura, is a revelation. The Tracyanne Campbell-led outfit,
reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let's Get Out of This
Country, My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that
simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved
them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort
to date. It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura's
career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and
friend Carey Lander (to whom the penultimate track "Sugar
Almond" is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus.
They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they
announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of
Belle & Sebastian's 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along
with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna
Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny
McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee
Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since
become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell's. Recorded in
the same room where Queen wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody," Look
to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of
Camera Obscura's sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go
back to basics_there are no string or brass arrangements, with
more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ,
and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have
dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous
albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera
Obscura's baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have
never been more apparent_guitars shimmer into the distance,
keys haunt, and Campbell's voice searches for the heart, reflecting
on love, loss, and the passage of time. Lead single "Big Love"
relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining
break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim
Davidson. It's a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the
complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with
Campbell's uncanny ability to render the past: "It was a big love,
she said / That's why it took ten years to get her out of her head,"
she begins. "We're Going to Make It in a Man's World" was cowritten with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon's 2021 film
Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look
to the West's cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who
was on the cover of Camera Obscura's debut, Biggest Bluest HiFi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being
women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidson's
pedal steel and Maciocia's keys. "The Light Nights" is a swooning
song propelled by a western shuffle and killer guitar, striking a
balance between a particularly good honky-tonk joint's jukebox
and a lost gem of California pop music waiting to be discovered in
a 7-inch bin. Look to the East, Look to the West is the sound of a
band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than
ever. It is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative, an
album that completely rearranges the listener's emotional core,
leaving them sad and exhilarated at the same time. Camera
Obscura's catalog is replete with songs people point to as lifechanging, songs that will stick with them all their lives. Look to the
East, Look to the West has 11 of them; take your pick.
TRACKLISTING: 01. LIBERTY PRINT 02. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT IN A
MAN'S WORLD 03. BIG LOVE 04. ONLY A DREAM 05. THE LIGHT
NIGHTS 06. SLEEPWALKING 07. BABY HUEY (HARD TIMES) 08. DENON
09. POP GOES POP 10. SUGAR ALMOND 11. LOOK TO THE EAST,
LOOK TO THE WEST