My Maudlin Career
- Camera Obscura
- Band Name: Camera Obscura
- Record Label: 4AD
- Release Date: Apr 21, 2009
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My Maudlin Career is the kind of record that exists to reward those both mad, and sad, in love.
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Occasionally shrouded in sadness but with happiness always beating from its core, My Maudlin Career lays bare the sweet melancholy of love.
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It's an infectious album that blooms repeatedly throughout, unfolding in muted, endearing aural hues; simultaneously sad and celebratory, and always charming.
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83Maturity is a central concept to Camera Obscura--Campbell's found it in her singing, but in her lyrics, the search continues. The asymmetries in her personality give her songs their distinct character.
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83Clever, catchy, and moody, Maudlin Career is what contemporary pop music should be. It is wholly as satisfying as Campbell is unsatisfied.
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82The echo-chamber drums and forlorn strings crescendos that epitomize Camera Obscura's discography blossom on standouts like the Ronettes-like single 'French Navy,' country-rocker 'Forest And Sands,' and full-band travelogue pouter 'The Sweetest Thing.' [Spring 2009, p.100]
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80My Maudlin Career offers soul and sophistication in abundance.
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80My Maudlin Career is a wonderful set of songs and can deservedly sit alongside Let's Get Out Of This Country while showcasing how far Camera Obscura have come since their patchy yet charming début, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.
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80Her Dusty-meetsNancy tones glide as imperiously over violin-caressed opener 'French Navy' as on lustrous indie-country upgrade 'You Told A Lie,' reaching sublime lvels of heartache on the Spectoresque title track. [Jun 2009, p.109]
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If My Maudlin Career falls a tiny bit short of "Let's Get Out of This Country," and it does, it's only because that album was so wonderful.
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80Campbell's gorgeous, heartbreaking and--well--maudlin songs deserve to be heard by an audience far wider than Camera Obscura's current cult- indie-pop devoteees. [Jun 2009, p.119]
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This, their fourth album, feels like a breakthrough, more polished and poised to build on cult 2006 single 'Lloyd, Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?'
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80The result is a flawless blend of sunny pop, Motown, blues and jazz with the cleanest production in Camera Obscura's catalog.
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As a unit, the group amassed some of the best music of their careers onto this singular, 'effusively sentimental,' career.
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80The band's finest work, My Maudlin Career continues the pop rush we've come to expect from Camera Obscura but also develops the band's sound and identity in significant ways.
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My Maudlin Career is just such a uniformly endearing record. It's sentimental, yes, but pleasantly so, charming in its own little way.
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Over the course of one great LP (2004's "Underachievers Please Try Harder"), one pretty great one (2006's "Let's Get Out of This Country"), and now My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura have arrived at a sound centered on Campbell's self-reflective loneliness and their lifting of all the best of '60s music--a sound they own by themselves.
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While the twinkling piano of the title track illustrates the sort of contained feeling that reminds us why the bar was set so high to begin with. Only the dull 'Careless Love' and unnecessary album closer 'Honey In The Sun' detract. [Spring 2009, p.65]
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70On their fourth album, this Scottish indie-pop band's fondness for woeful heartache and Phil Spector–esque production reaches a poignant peak.
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It might sound formulaic, if it weren't so gorgeous. [Jun 2009, p.102]
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My Maudlin Career may not be the kind of album that breaks new ground or does anything particularly forward-looking musically, but what it lacks in that department it more than makes up for with intelligent pop hooks and some of the loveliest string arrangements of recent memory.
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70It's the musical equivalent of the death of Bambi's mother: exquisitely rendered, but, once experienced for the first time, you need to steel yourself for subsequent visits.
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Luckily, for both the album and its audience, the band's perseverance results in hits more often than misses.
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The songs work best when the band sticks to the balsa-wood wall of sound formula; they get into a spot of trouble when trying something different.
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60Nothing is a strong as 'Hey Lloyd...' and Traceyanne Campbell's lachrymose croon is struggling to find new melodies, but on tracks like 'French Navy' and 'Honey In The Sun,' CO remain heartbreakingly lucid. [May 2009, p.80]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 5
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Mixed: 0 out of 5
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Negative: 0 out of 5
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JamesB9Pure unbridled bliss! So melodic, so beautifully sad, so absolutely awesome!
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smithsgirl9
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TimE10