Camera Obscura @ 9:30 Club
The rock fans who wanted to spend their Father's Day dancing and covered with obscene amounts of sweat probably went to the Phoenix show at Rock and Roll Hotel. But while the fantastic Frenchmen went straight for the audience's dancing feet and raised hands, the morose Scots of Camera Obscura took a different approach to connecting with their audience, going for their heartstrings and tear ducts.
Camera Obscura's song tempos range from downtrodden and dragging to upbeat but still fairly depressing ("Hey Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken,") and the band's penchant for immobility mirrors these tempos. They don't act like rock stars and they don't look like rock stars. Singer Tracyanne Campbell, in a babydoll dress and hair bow, looks like she just might burst into tears at any moment. Her dry, sarcastic commentary (such as asking anyone if anybody had seen the Obama family or announcing that the band was leaving the stage to start drinking beer) belies the sad little girl image, but she plays the part so well that everyone in the audience couldn't help but stare wide-eyed as she sung away her woes.
The forlorn numbers reached a high level of lush beauty on 2003's Underachievers Please Try Harder and 2006's Let's Get Out of This Country. But they only played "Teenager" from the former album, and their most recent release, My Maudlin Career, isn't as immediately resonant with its overdose of dense layering and oddly mixed vocals. Sunday night's 9:30 Club show suggested that the problem with My Maudlin Career lay in fact with the production, rather than the songwriting. The guitars and keyboards didn't sound overly hazy, nor were Campbell's vocals overly strong, so songs like the upbeat "Honey in the Sun" and childlike "Swans" sounded much more fun, while ballads like "James" were more heartbreaking. Campbell and guitarist Kenny McKeeve returned as a duo to start the encore with "Other Towns & Cities", which sounded quite a bit more harrowing live than on the album, where the track borders on lifeless.
Although the new tracks stood up well next to the older ones, the songs from Let's Get Out of This Country drew quite a few more cheers. This show belonged more to songs than stage presence, but that proved to be a bonus for the sake of fans less than impressed with My Maudlin Career.