# Album Review: Camera Obscura’s ‘Desire Lines’

- Link: https://indierockcafe.com/2013/06/album-review-camera-obscuras-desire-lines/
- Published: 2013-06-07T02:58:48-04:00
- Author: Max Hammer

by Devin William Daniels

**Camera Obscura**‘s new album, _Desire Lines_, is a dreamy and pristine offering,
a reverse time capsule of pop music from a past that never existed. The high and
heartbroken denizens of **Rick Deckard**‘s Los Angeles would probably find it nostalgic;
in 2013, it’s just a blur. The record is covered in the musical equivalent of the
new car smell. It’s undeniably new – the leather’s unworn, the windshield will never
be more clear – yet also evokes the spirit of the ‘classic.’

Camera Obscura possesses a pop sensibility that clashes with the modern idea of 
pop. The songs are clean and appealing, lacking in the cynical devotion to familiarity
that dominates the radio waves. Camera Obscura’s pop sound is not exactly old school,
though. The melancholic, oneiric overtones and the trip-hop guitar lines do not 
neatly fit into past traditions and would unlikely top the pop charts. However, 
one could imagine a record like _Desire Lines_ in regular rotation if the musical
dominoes had fallen a little differently. It’s like the retro-can of Dr. Pepper 
made with real sugar and without _Iron Man 3_ promo labels – nostalgia in the form
of a modern commodity – and that strange sense of temporality is the dominant experience
of the album.

An attentive listener of the album may call it “boring,” and perhaps “great background
music” – which are not the most flattering of epithets; and yet, so effective is
its hypnotic atmosphere that whatever mundane activity occupies the listeners’ “
foreground” becomes undeniably colored by the “background.”

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Of course, some would argue that the point of a record is to supply great songs,
and _Desire Lines_ does not necessarily succeed in that regard. Individual tracks
rarely come out and grab you, which separates it from the hook-and-hit focus of 
much of indie pop, for both good and bad. When there are songs that do stand out,
it’s usually due to an incongruous break of the mood rather than a moment of pop
transcendence. “Do It Again” – around the album’s midpoint – is the most guilty 
of this offense; but, it didn’t take long for the following song, the wonderfully
arranged, “Cri du Ceour,” to bring me back under the spell.

In the final analysis, _Desire Lines_ is high on atmosphere and low on substance.
Upon inspection, the individual elements of the record are lacking in much positive
content. Hooks are largely missing, and when they are, they’re quite weak. **Tracyanne
Campbell’**s vocals are technically strong but end up sounding like buttered toast;
you can get these vocals anywhere, and there’s little reason to make a special trip.

Campbell sacrifices individuality and affect for dreaminess, without capturing the
unique haunting vocalizations of an artist like **Victoria Legrand**. Campbell’s
voice is paired with well-arranged instruments that are at worst, precise, and at
best, brilliant. But she never really makes the songs her own amongst all the technical
wizardry of the production. We’re left with a well-executed, consistent dream pop
album that never really breaks out into a run, but it’s a fairly enjoyable sleepwalk.

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“Fifth In Line to the Throne” – **Camera Obscrua** from _Desire Lines_

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Rating: **6.5** of 10

_Devin William Daniels is a freelance writer and musician from Allentown, Pennsylvania.
He teaches English in South Korea and records music as the Negative Sound_