Vinyl love: Camera Obscura “Let’s get out of this country”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Camera Obscura
Album Title: Let’s get out of this country
Year released: 2006
Year reissued: 2009
Details: Black vinyl, 180 gram

The skinny: For their third album, Camera Obscura really did as the title suggested and got out of Scotland, travelling to Sweden to record it with producer Jari Haapalainen. They really wanted to shake things up after founding member John Henderson had left following the recording and touring cycle of their previous record. All of the tracks on this album were written and sung by Tracyanne Campbell, giving the band a static face and sound. The twee aesthetic is still there but there’s definitely a 60s motown influence about the whole proceedings. Indeed, “Let’s get out of this country” was where the band really built their name and I was lucky to score a copy of this reissue off Amazon at a decent price before they all disappeared. It hasn’t been reissued since and to get a copy of my favourite album by the band would cost me a heck of a lot more nowadays.

Standout track: “Lloyd, I’m ready to be heartbroken”