Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Camera Obscura “My maudlin career”

(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: My maudlin career
Year released: 2009
Details: Black vinyl, gatefold sleeve

The skinny: For part three of this mini Vinyl Love series on Scottish indie pop band Camera Obscura, we have their fourth record and the first on 4AD, “My maudlin career”. After the success of “Let’s get out of this country”, the group decided to once again work with that album’s producer, Jari Haapalainen, and though the aesthetic and quality is similar, it’s far from being a lazy reproduction. Yet as much as I love all the delicious heartbreak, the original pressing of this album actually only came to be a part of my collection almost two years ago. It came to me on one of my last ever visits to the brick and mortar record stores in Toronto. I haven’t gotten to the Big Smoke as often as I would have liked in the last year and a half (for obvious reasons) and none of the few times that I did have afforded the opportunity to visit the shops. Things are looking up, though, and I’m feeling that those happy times will return soon… but I digress. This is an excellent album that gets the nostalgia flowing so it’s worth another spin.

Standout track: “French navy”

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #58 Sarah McLachlan “Blackbird”

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Way back at number 90 on this list, I wrote about Rufus Wainwright’s cover of “Across the universe” for the soundtrack of the Sean Penn film, “I am Sam”. Now, more than thirty songs later on this 100 best covers list, we have another Canadian artist covering another Beatles track off the very same soundtrack.

The music for “I am Sam” was supposed to reflect the title character’s love for Beatles music, a sort of crutch for an intellectually disabled man fighting for custody of a daughter, named, get this, Lucy. The original Beatles songs were chosen while filming was taking place so when the filmmakers were refused the rights to those originals, covers were commissioned that had to retain the same track length and time signatures.

The Paul McCartney penned “Blackbird”, a gentle acoustic piece about US racial tensions off The white album, was assigned to Canadian singer/writer, Sarah McLachlan. It was recorded right in the middle of a six year break between her very successful 1997 record “Surfacing” and the 2003 ‘comeback’ album, “Afterglow”. I honestly don’t know how well McLachlan does outside of Canada but here at home, she is pretty legendary. And why not? That voice of hers is golden. She made a career out being a solo, folk-influenced female artist in a time when male-dominated grunge was king. She started the Lilith fair touring festival in 1996, a card that prominently featured female solo artists or female-led bands and was so successful that two more annual editions followed. I’ve never been a huge fan of her myself, but you can’t argue with her talent and her success.

Much like the stripped down original, Sarah McLahlan’s cover is built upon beautiful finger plucking on the acoustic and yeah, that wonderful voice of hers. It is quite simply a lovely rendition. Do I like it better than the original? No. However, I do find it a shade better than the one done by Doves (who you all know that I love) for the Roswell soundtrack. So yeah, I think that’s saying something.

Cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

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”