The Post-Rockist

This is a Test: Lite Brite Day 3

Posted by Todd

Tracyanne Campbell

I know what you’re thinking, “What? Why no Day 2 coverage of the Lite Brite Indie Pop & Film Test? Why the glaring omission, O reliable music news source?” Well, the fact of the matter is that the normally ubiquitous P-R machine felt obligated to lay low for an evening and, you know, play with the kids, count our piles of money, and in general stay out of the public’s eye in light of recent damaging allegations linking the Post-Rockist’s CFO to the financial interests of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients. And also, let’s be honest, because we don’t have to resources to pretend to be experts in touting the relative awesomeness of every single musical act that passes through our greedy little fingers. Granted, it would have really been something else to boast of a sweaty night with Boston’s Mission of Burma and what allmusic calls their “vintage early-’80s post-punk” sound, but when I go to something called the Lite Brite Indie Pop & Film Test, I’m gearing up for some sugary sweet pop music. And, like a catalogue of awkwardly fumbled dates, that’s exactly what Lite Brite Day 3 delivered.

Sunday’s line-up was a walking tour through the familiar stages of adolescent romantic grief in song format. Oh No! Oh My!, Georgie James, and Camera Obscura played sets that were in respective turns naively hopeful, untouchably lusty, and breathlessly forlorn. Seeking comfort in pop music has never been so obviously a growing process.

Austin’s Oh No! Oh My! started the night with a set filled with youthful humility, excessive punctuation, and ambitiously cute song structures. It was hard to dislike them, given how effortlessly they portrayed next generation suburban high school puppy lovers who take themselves and their poetry too seriously. Although Greg Barkley sang with the sort of nasally inflection that smelled a little too strongly of uncomfortable teenage melodrama, I found myself sitting patiently throughout the entire performance, pleasantly surprised at the freshness of their indie repetoire. All the while the jumbotron captured images of the band with visual effects at least 30 years out of date.

Georgie James

Next on the roster was Georgie James, who herald from Washington, D.C., and come with the Post-Rockist’s Pennsylvania correspondent’s seal of approval. Ah yes, Georgie James. Sweet Georgie James. No one in the band goes by the name “Georgie” or “James,” let alone “Georgie James,” the title was chosen as a fitting tribute to the singer/power pop songwriters listed as influences on their MySpace page: Marshall Crenshaw, Todd Rundgren, Chris Bell, Georgie James. To my ears, the quickest comparison I could come up with was that they sound like Beth Orton fronting Wings. Hey, there’s a place for that, too.

There is something distinctly appealing about watching a band replicate the glossy guitar sound and fanciful rhythmic underpinnings of 1970s big pop songwriters without a trace of irony. John Davis, former drummer of the Dischord punk band Q And Not U and Georgie James guitarist/vocalist, jackknifed danceable chords the likes of which I’ve never heard before and sweated like Philip Seymour Hoffman in a Turkish bath house. Despite Davis’s energetic performance, all eyes were on the composed and doll-faced Laura Burhenn as she plucked notes on her Rhodes electric piano and dominated the plucky girl-boy vocals.

Camera Obscura

The Lite Brite Test was the last stop on a joint tour of the unsigned Georgie James with Camera Obscura, the somber Scottish six-piece. Although Tracyanne Campbell, the matron of Camera Obscura, may be a dimunitive person in stature, she’s got a heart loaded with an abundance of Northern Soul. With her brows furrowed and her quiet, lilting voice she sings with grand compassion and heartache, always pining for someone or something just out of reach. The band started their set with “Come Back Margaret,” where Tracyanne’s sadness was unmistakable even under the layers of colorful twee pop: “Darling you will always be around, whether my mood’s up or if it’s down. In dreams I try to take you far away, but you never stay, no you never stay.” Although most of her songs seem to be confessional and introverted accounts of frailty, Campbell handled herself on stage with steel resolve, which just worked to make her seem more intriguing.

The band was flawless, even managing to perfectly capture the bridge on “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken” where the guitar lead segues seamlessly into the trumpet. In a moment of (supposedly) spontaneous mirth, Tracyanne broke out a little Paul Simon and tambourine action at the tail end of the title track to 2006’s gem Let’s Get Out of This Country, singing, “If you’ll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal. You can call me Betty, and Betty when you call me, you can call me Al, oh call me Al.” There’s a terrible tug toward inwardness that is encouraged by the beautifully withdrawn music along the lines of Camera Obscura; yet sometimes a tiny spark can be set off in a live setting where that loneliness can be transcended and you recognize in that isolation a sense of community. Even if it is only for a second.

Camera Obscura