The album art for Camera Obscura's Desire Lines

Camera Obscura

Desire Lines

Camera Obscura’s latest record, Desire Lines, reveals a renewed sense of creative energy from the band. Their brand of indie pop shimmers, but unlike most of its kind, it has a real soul.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of awesome bands hailing from Glasgow. Camera Obscura is one of those groups. Desire Lines is their sixth record, and it’s as perfect as a slab of shiny indie pop can be. Singer Tracyanne Campbell has a positively angelic voice; she never once hits anything other than a beautiful note. There aren’t any videos yet, but Do It Again looks like the lead single.

There is a certain feeling that, this time around, Camera Obscura are giving us the best they have to offer. It’s clear they’re not comfortable with maintaining the same sound they always have, opting instead to grow and feel comfortable with that growth. What’s interesting is that, despite the fact that they are engineering increasingly perfect recordings, Camera Obscura feels uncomfortable with that and wants to mix it up and get a renewed vision for what it means to make music in 2013. It’s a statement, and a darned good one.