Enthralling: Camera Obscura’s “Desire Lines”

Camera Obscura

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Camera Obscura
Desire Lines
4AD

Scotland’s Tracyanne Campbell has a voice that could break your heart. Sad, sweet and serene at once, she’s in peak form on the enthralling Desire Lines, Camera Obscura’s fifth album and first in four years.

While her elegant pop melodies could be repurposed as ’60s girl-group sounds or ’50s doo-wop, Campbell’s deceptively complex lyrics offer a more nuanced look at relationships than traditional mainstream melodramas usually provide. “You say honesty has made me cruel,” she sings gently in the tender “William’s Heart,” adding, “I say you’re soft and made of wool.” On “This Is Love (Feels Alright)” Campbell exclaims, “When I found your girlfriend crying / I could have slapped you in the face,” in sharp contrast to the song’s comforting textures.

For those who care about such things, Neko Case and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James show support by adding backing vocals, but Desire Lines is its own nonguilty pleasure, soaked in romanticism—yet bracingly smart.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate