My Maudlin Career Camera Obscura

My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura’s fourth studio album, was recorded in Stockholm with Jari Haapalainen (who’d previously teamed up with the Glasgow group for 2006’s Let’s Get Out of This Country). It’s a lush collection of nine tracks – a 46 minute masterclass in baroque-pop: honest, heart wrenching and laden with horns. There are moments when the group sweep you up entirely; drop you right in the midst of an old Hollywood film, swaying gently on the floor beside the one you love. My Maudlin Career is a frosty morning walk through Queen’s Park in the middle of November. It’s a hazy July night on the pier as the world winds down and ice-cream from your 99 cone drips onto the pavement. It’s whatever you want it to be, whenever you want it to be.

11 months ago, I packed all of my belongings into the back of my old Ford Ka and moved my life to Glasgow. The ride from up north takes around 3 hours without stopping and in my determined state to make it down in one swift journey, I compiled a playlist and went on my way. There was a mixture of things scattered throughout – Jessica Pratt, Rilo Kiley, Mojave 3, Waxahatchee, Camera Obscura.

I don’t entirely remember the first time I heard My Maudlin Career. I was definitely a teenager, slowly but surely unearthing every discography Scotland had to offer, but that doesn’t matter, not really, because I remember all the moments in my life where it made its way in; the moments it soundtracked, the night I parked up at the golf course beside my grandparents house and Careless Love played through the speakers and into the night.

“People have been travelling miles to hear us sing”, Tracyanne reflects upon during Away with Murder. That’s true in a literal sense, I suppose. Just a few weeks back I recall a friend of mine mention in passing that they’d like to see the band as they stop off in Mexico City during their upcoming tour. But, people have been travelling through life with My Maudlin Career, too.

Like me, crossing the Forth Bridge with all my records and cardboard boxes in tow, French Navy spilling out of the car radio and into my new world.