The opening moments of the record seem designed to assuage those concerns immediately. On “Liberty Print,” Campbell unleashes a layered ride, then begins to spin out her grooved phrases like soft pearls. Walking on a bed of shimmering doo-wop, they sound at once familiar and suffused with tender associations, but the hissing drum machine is something new, and the band finds a similar balance of fond memories and fresh energy in each song. Guitar leads and bass grooves are more prominent and each member seems to have more room to breathe and shine. The worst you could say about any previous Camera Obscura album was that it had such blinding highs that they overshadowed other great songs – the conundrum of 'French Navy'. But their latest is their most consistent yet, and it's one of their best.
Look East, Look West, which reunites the band with two-time producer Jari Haapalainen, strips away the instrumental elements to make room for both more electronic textures—drums, quirky guitar or period effects—and a deeper country palette of piano, pedal steel and star Hammond. organ. Sometimes things are as simple as the lead single, “Big Love,” a soulful, soulful slice of California country rock, but “Only a Dream” switches up the band's usual guitar reverb with a tremolo delay that ripples with concentric rings, reminiscent of the space gardens of the Cranberries song of the same name. A pair of stunners called 'Sleepwalking' and 'Sugar Almond', the latter written for Lander, make you wonder why Campbell doesn't do solo piano ballads more often, with such a perfectly structured yet expressive voice for it.
“Denon” seems to be made of his baroque pop Pet sounds and the Christine McVie side of Fleetwood Mac, that nimble, stirring sense of melody. It shows – alongside the Maciocia-penned “We're Gonna Make It in a Man's World” – what it's tempting to call a new sense of confidence: “Hey, it's okay if you find me trite,” Campbell sings. “The lines on my face are clear and visible.” But really, while he might be flying under the radar because of all the charming posturing and mooning over sailors, he's always talked that way. The chorus of the first song on her first record put it: “I know where I stand/I don't need you to hold my hand.” This sense of no-nonsense centering between the painful confusion of life and love has always been the heart of Camera Obscura, and it still beats here.
Campbell is a distinctive lyricist in the way she wanders through effective clichés, strikingly shot images, slices of life and funny vernaculars, and just as casually whips up stand-alone lines you never forget along the way. My favorite is “Now my door has swellen from the rain”, from “Books Written for Girls”. The standout line here is on “Baby Huey (Hard Times),” one of the best and most adventurous new looks, a stretchy electro-pop taffy in the vein of Blow's classic “True Affection.” Over a gently shifting acoustic guitar, Campbell sings, “The chaos of summer has died,” seeming to wrap up all that has been irretrievably lost while awakening to what is not yet, in the fall and winter of life, when the proportions of things become clearer. Look East, Look West it reminds us of better times, while enabling us to believe that better things are yet to come.
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