Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/05/2018

The pairing on this album is unquestionably apt, bringing together as it does works by perhaps the two most famous InchaitasInch (priests) in Basque music Father José Antonio de Donostia and Father Francisco de Madina. Whatever the similarities and differences between the two men, the former born twenty-one years earlier than the latter, both composers succeeded in incorporating, with exquisite elegance, a profound sense of local folk traditions into their music, creating works that have since earned classic status in Basque culture. The soprano Arantza Ezenarro was born in San Sebastián in the Basque Area of Spain. With this Album she presents most sensitive songs of her homeland.

Look to the East, Look to the West is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative. Reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let's Get Out of This Country, My Maudlin Career), Camera Obscura have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades, while also being their most sophisticated effort to date. Lead single Big Love relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. Were Going to Make It in a Mans World was co-written with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmons 2021 film Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the Wests cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura's debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidsons pedal steel and Maciocias keys. CD is a 4-panel wallet + a 15 page lyric booklet.