Camera Obscura Album: “Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi”

Sweet melodic pop reminiscent of mellower Yo La Tengo tunes. "Shines Like a New Pin" really does shine as do the very catchy "Anti-Western" and the instrumental "Arrangements of Shapes and Space." The sweet and uncertain wallflowery voice of the female vocalist makes you want to be her friend.

Now this one is easy.

The sweet sounds of baby Glasgow - jingle-jangle.

Thankfully Camera Obscura don't wallow in the normal trough of miserablism like so many young groups from the inner-cities. It's been done to death, no-one needs angst and worthiness any more, what we need is 'Houseboat's aplenty and 'Pen and Notebook's by the score.

Airy and breezy is the order of the day with mad acoustic strumming, the naïve but always welcome teeming of strings and enticing, whispered vocals - just the blue-sky and cotton-wool clouds combination required for a Spring picnic by the river.

'Biggest, Bluest Hi-Fi' isn't a stereo-system playing a Derek and Clive cd - it's a sussy little album from folky-folks completely entrenched in and obsessed with Orange Juice, Strawberry Switchblade, Altered Images and the Bluebells.

Camera Obscura; Lindsay, Tracyanne (swoon and more swoon!) and some guys in touch with their feminine sides. Could you want more?

"Close comes the winter, summer is no longer.

And things, they seem much bleaker.

We'll see a Catherine Deneuve double-feature.

And our lives will fade as in darkness we will bathe.."

Brings a wee lump to your throat hen...

A wonderful group that continues to delight me. How to describe....a scottish western group or maybe mazzy star if they had more than two good songs each the album. BEWARE there are 2 other groups with the same name.

They have to be one of the most boring acoustic indie pop bands

i've come across. The only comparisons to belle and sebastian i see are the use of the same instruments and producer. The songs as a whole are monotonous. You can stop a song in the middle and play the next track starting from the middle, and you'd think it's the same song. At least change the melody/arrangement/dynamics of the vocals or sOMeTHIng. I'm sure they're talented; the quality is not bad; just boring.