Touring behind their fantastic new album Let’s Get Out of This Country, Glaswegian twee-pop torchbearers CAMERA OBSCURA played a terrific, hour-long set that predictably but delightfully focused on the new album. Chestnuts such as the terrific single “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken,” along with other album cuts like “Tears for Affairs,” “The False Contender,” “I Need All the Friends I Can Get” and the title track were all played on this evening, to my delight. However, they also covered their first two albums, 2001’s Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi and 2003’s Underachievers Please Try Harder, with songs like their debut single, the STUART MURDOCH-produced “Eighties Fan,” and “I Love My Jean,” a tribute to the late JOHN PEEL. On one song, lead singer and guitarist TRACEYANNE CAMPBELL quoted the chorus from PAUL SIMON’s ubiquitous 1986 hit “You Can Call Me Al.”
Opener GEORGIE JAMES featured JOHN DAVIS, the former drummer for the now-defunct DC band Q AND NOT U. In Georgie James, Davis plays guitar and shares lead vocal duties with keyboardist LAURA BURHENN. They played a set of music that was very dissimilar to Davis’s previous band. Instead of Q and Not U’s herky-jerky dance-punk, Georgie James evoke ‘70s power-pop icons like BIG STAR, TODD RUNDGREN and even CHEAP TRICK at times. While their sound was pleasant and their energy and enthusiasm apparent, nothing stood out in their set, as the songwriting felt a bit flat.
Local Philadelphia band BOTTOM OF THE HUDSON opened the show with a set of shoegazing Anglophilia, complete with singer ELI SIMON’s Brit-affected vocals. While like Georgie James, their sound was pleasant, there was nothing about them song-wise or otherwise that really stood out.
The above photos of Camera Obscura and Bottom of the Hudson were taken by Anne Leavitt-Gruberger since her camera is much more capable of taking pictures in dark clubs than my lowly one is.
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