Camera Obscura is one of those bands that I feel gets kind of jobbed by the headline-grasping nature of the curious beast that is “overly indie-skewing music journalism” these days. The Glaswegians keep pumping out chiming, beautiful pop, choosing to just release insanely catchy music (and adorable videos) instead of grasping for headlines or engaging in egregious myth-making or babbling about how they’ve taken so many drugs, you guys. And it’s hard not to wonder if their profile suffers for it—after all, in this increasingly distracted age, artists can vault to pageview-generating fame simply because of their status as near-disasters who people love to hate, with anything they do musically coming in second (or lower) on the “pressing concerns” scale. Anyway, above is the video for Camera Obscura’s new single “The Sweetest Thing,” and after the jump is the clip for another song from their new-ish album My Maudlin Career, “French Navy.” More »
So, after months of working it out in front of live audiences, the Danish-Norwegian dance collective Aqua has finally released “Back To The ’80s,” in which they not only nostalgize the decade, they try to revise history and insert their decidedly ’90s hit “Barbie Girl” into it. One might think that this is merely a case of Aqua thinking that the last decade wasn’t good in a monolithic-touchstone sort of way, but they’re actually entering into a long tradition of artists who have paid nostalgic tribute to the constantly misunderstood decade via the power of song. After the jump, a few other tracks that tried to get a handle on the most-nostalgized decade since the ’50s. (Or maybe the ’60s?) More »
