Camera Obscura – If Looks Could Kill
“You act like a man who is cross with every woman he’s never had,” spits a singer with lilt styling. Such as the sound of beneath-our-feet partying, it’s those mad murmurs of the song’s opening chapter, with acute symmetry, vibration, and pacing, that offer the pull and grab action. “If Looks Could Kill” is less an appeal to our neediness for catchiness and hook satisfaction (although ironically present in sweet abundance), but more an immediate call to the purity of our heart strings. It’s a familiar sound with a not so familiar reaction. In the same way your mother’s favourite vinyl has those aging melodies that offers up such a touching level of tenderness, Camera Obscura give us the same, cocooned by what we know: storming chords, a swaggering bass line exuding all the energy and greed of a violent punch, and that embrace-happy melody, too. Such utterly flavourful vocal melody. Good song writing is a fortunate thing. [Elefant ER-1123 CD and LP / Merge MRG276.]