My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura

My Maudlin Career, the fourth album from Glasgow's Camera Obscura, went up for streaming on 14 April 2009 before 4AD released it on 20 April. Jari Haapalainen of the Bear Quartet produced it, as he had Let's Get Out of This Country, and Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John wrote the string and horn arrangements.

Those arrangements do a lot of the swooning. This is indie pop dressed up in its Sunday best, all lush strings, brass fanfares and girl-group heartbeat, with Tracyanne Campbell out front singing about love and its wreckage with a dry wit that keeps things from getting soppy. Kenny McKeeve's guitar, Gavin Dunbar's bass, Lee Thomson's drums and Carey Lander's keyboards give it a warm, rolling lift. "French Navy" is the giddy, galloping single, and "Honey in the Sun" is its sunnier cousin. The twee tag followed them around, but this sounds grown-up.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.