overlap

*So sings Traceyanne Campbell in Camera Obscura's song Away With Murder, and she has a very good point. Starting getting ready before 4pm is a good guide to a gig being something special, in more than one way. With a long bath, and more than enough make up behind me, my new handbag and I headed off to see Camera Obscura once again. I'm a very visual creature, and one of the things that makes my life easier is being able to rehearse the visualisation of where I am going, and what happens when I get there. With a familiar (and free!) parking spot only a short distance away, it's still something of an ordeal to get to the venue and inside it, a little bottle-related parking and moving on notwithstanding. Despite the getting through the door security gauntlet-running, it's relatively easy to go and stand in the dark, even if I'm a head taller than most of the other women on the premises. In a cramped space, there's more than enough sweat to make even the best Hollywood make up artists' work run, so it's not exactly easy to keep my cool. The bar was rammed when I got in, and while the lots of people coming through the front door makes me one of many rather than an isolated individual, it's still a moment or two of fear mixed with panic mixed with hope. Support act Magic Arm has a lot in common with Rob Jones' Voluntary Butler Scheme, in terms of sampled drum loops and so forth, but where the VBS makes a virtue of things that don't quite work, Magic Arm guy makes it look like technical probnlems rather than intentional vagueness, so it's not 100% convincing. I like the slightly more delicate acoustic guitar bits, I'm just not entirely certain how much is intentional. Camera Obscura, on the other hand, seem to have everything under control, despite Traceyanne's difficulties with the in-ear monitoring. It's great to see a band who make proper pop music for grown-ups, amd middle-aged people like me included. It would be futile to go through the set in detail, but Teenager is fabulous, and the whole set is over bang on 11 pm so I can be home by midnight-ish and take forever to type this out as the wine takes hold of my typing fingers. I'm way beyond a sensible, objective review here, but I had a great time.

Labels: Camera Obscura, gigs