through frosted glass i could see a fire burning bright inside

i am/was interested in how a casual bystander might view camera obscura,this is a negative view of someone who watched the performance at ATP last weekend...lookin at the photo`s it was the deflated bunch of greatness that was on show....we know why i think......so be warned...

After Mark Eitzel, I followed The Ledge down to Camera Obscura, thinking I’d probably be irritated and bored with their soulless, sub-par attempts to be Belle & Sebastian and could abandon it to watch Boris before I reached the point where I was tempted to jump on stage and start smashing the equipment. I somehow ended up watching the whole set (mainly because we managed to walk right up to the front and realised we were in a great place to watch Pavement, so didn’t want to move).

Camera Obscura are a band that completely lack charisma, stage presence and any form of animation while performing. When you marry this with the fact that they have 2 decent songs – “Hey, Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken” and “French Navy” and the rest of their catalogue consists of songs that want to sound exactly like those two songs but only end up being poor cousins, then you can understand when I say that watching Camera Obscura play live is very much what I imagine being dead feels like. When you watch them for a full hour, you start to understand what being dead for all eternity feels like.

They did, eventually, finish, and thank goodness,

this is partly i suppose why the band are concentrating their efforts elsewhere....earlier on in this post b&s had been mentioned(again/still/whatever)...

graeme wrote:

i am/was interested in how a casual bystander might view camera obscura,this is a negative view of someone who watched the performance at ATP last weekend...lookin at the photo`s it was the deflated bunch of greatness that was on show....we know why i think......so be warned...

After Mark Eitzel, I followed The Ledge down to Camera Obscura, thinking I’d probably be irritated and bored with their soulless, sub-par attempts to be Belle & Sebastian and could abandon it to watch Boris before I reached the point where I was tempted to jump on stage and start smashing the equipment. I somehow ended up watching the whole set (mainly because we managed to walk right up to the front and realised we were in a great place to watch Pavement, so didn’t want to move).

Camera Obscura are a band that completely lack charisma, stage presence and any form of animation while performing. When you marry this with the fact that they have 2 decent songs – “Hey, Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken” and “French Navy” and the rest of their catalogue consists of songs that want to sound exactly like those two songs but only end up being poor cousins, then you can understand when I say that watching Camera Obscura play live is very much what I imagine being dead feels like. When you watch them for a full hour, you start to understand what being dead for all eternity feels like.

They did, eventually, finish, and thank goodness,

this is partly i suppose why the band are concentrating their efforts elsewhere....earlier on in this post b&s had been mentioned(again/still/whatever)...

I don't know what to say - the guy goes to a performance with that attitude, he's going to get what he expects. Especially at a festival or with any huge audience, where Camera Obscura is typically going auto-pilot. From all the video/audio bootlegs I've seen, I've come to the conclusion that to really shine, the band needs the intimacy and personality of a small gig. Those in-store ones, probably the smallest physically possible, were bloody amazing. The Williamsburg one on Babel, I could take or leave (sorry Derek).

well, you'll get nay-sayers for everything.. but looking at this review piqued my curiosity and i checked out a few more entries by this yahoo.. he is so chalk-full of negativity, i don't know what he expects at a show - free bjs for all audience members?! he obviously fancies himself some sort of high-profile critic who gets their jollies off knockin others down. as ya can tell - i love critics..
bolony