The wistful, skillfully orchestrated pop on Let’s Get Out of This Country (Merge), the new disc from Scotland’s CAMERA OBSCURA, would sound perfect through the green-glowing dashboard radio of a 1962 Impala–baroque but not overwrought, twee but not cutesy, it confidently appropriates vintage American sounds from Motown to Bacharach. The word “country” in the title works on a couple different levels: it refers to American country music, with its recurring theme of escape from dead-end small-town life, and the album’s lyrics connect that theme to the rural ennui and stifling national culture of the band’s own country. Though the songs are almost oversaturated with tasty sounds–“Tears for Affairs” hums with jazzy guitar, weepy accordion, a trickling keyboard line, and shivering castanets–the arrangements are rescued from preciousness by the vulnerable, breezily heartbroken voice of Tracyanne Campbell, who sounds like Petula Clark or a less sleepy Hope Sandoval. There are very few nods on This Country to fellow Glasgow indie heavyweights like Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand–to find a viable Scottish connection you have to go back to the tense Anglo R & B of early-80s Postcard Records acts like Orange Juice and Josef K, echoed here on the Detroit groove of “If Looks Could Kill.” –J. Niimi
