CDREVIEW

(Merge Records)

They’re a sextet from Glasgow who have made some buzz in the UK, they have two lead singers—a man and a woman—and their new album, Underachievers Please Try Harder, sports a cover photo of two women in 60s garb—one clutching a teddy bear and the other an old-fashioned movie camera. Song titles on the new disc include “Suspended from Class,” “Your Sister’s Social Agony,” “Teenager” and “Books Written for Girls.” Does this sound at all familiar?

Camera Obscura’s sound and style seem plucked right from Tigermilk-era Belle & Sebastian, blended with the seminal acoustic indie-pop aesthetic identified with NME’s C-86 compilation and the Sarah 100. Informing the 60s sound and its topical fixation on childish love, Camera Obscura sing slyly ironic lyrics that show abounding self-deprecation. The chorus of lilting opener “Suspended From Class” demonstrates this compromise between form and content best: “I should be suspended from my class,” ethereal lead singer Tracy-Anne Campbell sings, “I don’t know my elbow from my ass.”

Campbell’s voice falls squarely within the Mazzy Star-Sundays-Cardigans school of female vocals, endearingly unconfident and off-key as to convincingly portray the naïveté the songs profess. She comes closest to exploding free of that shy facade in the jump to the chorus of the bouncy “Number One Son,” an album standout that keeps with the theme of precious childhood love. This creates a pleasing balance with the weighty “Your Picture,” a dark Leonard Cohen-like dirge, which strikes out a vivid character sketch: “She told me you’d given up drinking / to be with somebody you knew / and you tried to get into the Bible / But it never got into you.” John Henderson sings here with vocals of the same cut as Campbell’s: weak, battered, and timidly appealing.

Like “Your Picture,” most of these songs fall under the category of character sketch. Camera Obscura write pithy portraits, and their literary leanings fit nicely with the chamber-pop accompaniment. Flutes, strings, and bells sparkle and shimmer on most tracks, combining with surf-rock bass lines to produce the overwhelming impression that this music comes from a different era.

Underachievers boasts excellent songwriting and a warm, appealing sound that swells as a result of crisp production and sweeping arrangements. The unabashed sincerity of the band’s lyrics is a bit off-putting under this cozy guise, but perhaps the only consequence of image and sound against lyrical content is a doubly-detached indie irony, and the legions that will wrongly decry them as rip-offs.

—Chris A. Kukstis