Bands of Glasgow: Camera Obscura release new single 'We're Going To Make It in a Man's World'

Beloved Glaswegian indie-pop band Camera Obscura have released their new single, “We're Going to Make It in a Man's World,” the second track to be lifted from their first new album in over ten years, Look to the East, Look to the West, out May 3rd on Merge Records.   The group, led by guitarist and vocalist Tracyanne Campbell, have reunited with Jari Haapalainen, producer of the band’s 2006 album Let’s Get Out of This Country and 2009’s My Maudlin Career, and crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.   “We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” was co-written with keyboardist Donna Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon’s 2021 film ‘Icarus (After Amelia)’ (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the West’s cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura’s debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Tim Davidson’s pedal steel and Maciocia’s keys.

  “This is a co-write with Donna, one of the first of many songs we have since written together,” says Campbell. “It is a bit tongue-in-cheek with a serious message at its core. As middle-aged women in the music industry, are we relevant? Who is interested in us? Where’s our place in an industry where women are so underrepresented?”   The new single follows lead track “Big Love”  which, with its “warm blanket of Nashville pedal steel and twinkling electric piano” (The New Cue) and “Tracyanne Campbell’s vocals as enchanting as ever" (Stereogum) sees Camera Obscura “back in fine form’ (New York Times).   In May, Camera Obscura will embark on their first UK Tour in over a decade, with support from Liz Lawrence:

CAMERA OBSCURA UK TOUR, MAY 2024 May 2         Hebden Bridge, The Trades Club SOLD OUT May 3         London, Rough Trade East,  4pm Live Performance NEW May 3         London, Rough Trade East,  7pm Live Performance + Signing SOLD OUT May 4         Leeds, Stylus May 6         Manchester, Academy 2 May 7         London, KOKO SOLD OUT May 9         Brighton, Concorde 2 May 10       Birmingham, O2 Academy2 May 11       Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom SOLD OUT

Camera Obscura will also play Belle & Sebastian’s The Glasgow Weekender (August 2nd & 3rd)  and End Of The Road Festival (Aug 29th - Sept 1st) this summer.   Look to the East, Look to the West was the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura’s career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friend Carey Lander, the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of Belle & Sebastian’s 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell’s.   Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Look to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscura’s sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basics—there are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. Look to the East, Look to the West is the sound of a band that has grown more confident in its sound and purpose than ever. This is Camera Obscura at their best and most evocative.