Audio By Carbonatix
On its recently released fourth album, My Maudlin Career,
Scotland’s Camera Obscura continues to swathe Tracyanne Campbell’s
melancholy yet droll lyrics in the warm glow of ’60s pop and classic
country, creating one of the year’s most lovable releases so far. On
the eve of the band’s Stateside tour, we rang up Campbell at home in
Glasgow to talk about the professional hazards of irony and being a
“sad” songwriter.
Westword: I read a review of your album recently that
called you “sincerely ironic.” Would you say that’s a fairly accurate
description of your M.O.?
Tracyanne Campbell: I don’t think that’s all I am. I’m not
always trying to be ironic. I think sometimes people think I write
lyrics where I’m always trying to hide behind irony or something, and
maybe I am and I just don’t know.
What about the irony that you’re taking songs that are at least
occasionally very bitter and dressing them up in the sounds of swooning
’60s pop — how much do you think about that?
People bring that up a lot, but it’s not that calculated… When the
band gets together, we just do what comes naturally. We don’t have
meetings and I go, “All right — I’ve written ten songs, and
they’re a bit miserable, and I really want to write ten classic
stomping pop tunes….” It just sort of happens by accident.
Not to keep harping on the perception that you’re this sad
person, but do you ever worry about your art becoming dependent on this
sense of melancholy?
Well, that’s what My Maudlin Career is really all about,
because I’m a very self-aware person, and I’m having a bit of a joke at
myself. I’m not just a sad person, I’m not just a melancholy person; I
tend to have a bit of a naturally melancholy aspect to my personality,
but it’s not something I want to sit around and do more of, you know?
It’s something I’d like to get rid of, and I try constantly to do that.
I think it’s important that one doesn’t just sit and wallow and accept
that. I may be prone to feeling a bit blue, but I try very hard to
fight that. I want to be a happy person, because I think those are the
best people to be around, and I don’t want to just wallow in self-pity.
I don’t want people to think that I’m this miserable girl who sits at
home and writes miserable songs and wants everybody to be miserable
— anything but that.
Visit blogs.westword.com/backbeat
for more of our interview with Tracyanne Campbell.
