Friday Fix: Camera Obscura, Bishop Allen, The Boy Least Likely To

Camera Obscura – “French Navy”
(from My Maudlin Career)

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Is there such a thing as a Camera Obscura song that doesn’t start in a dusty library? Tucked away inside, surrounded by stacks of old books and LPs, Tracyanne Campbell is the introvert par excellence. But the melancholy of her demure voice is at odds with the swelling strings of her band’s chamber pop signature, because no amount of reading stories about romance and adventure can prepare you for the swooning uncertainty that comes when real romance and adventure come knocking on your door.

Bishop Allen – “The Lion & the Teacup”
(from Grrr…)

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Between the pourqoui stories of lions and tigers and magpies, and the exotic fables of faraway-sounding places like South China and Shanghai and Oklahoma, I have a sneaking suspicion that Bishop Allen’s latest album is secretly an ode to Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. Only here, the instructive morals and animistic animals are couched in taut acoustic guitars and xylophone, because in this day and age, brisk indie pop is a much more effective communicator than robust, century-old narratives.

The Boy Least Likely To – “A Balloon On A Broken String”
(from The Law of the Playground)

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Speaking of fables, the Boy Least Likely To have won me over once again. Sure, they’re up to the same old tricks, but who said children’s stories could only be meaningful to children?