And I'm looking forward to Eleanor Friedberger's latest, which is streaming this week on NPR Music. About "Personal Record":
As a vocalist, Friedberger's dryly flat affect has a slight tremble to it, with appealing plainspokenness to match arrangements like the one in "When I Knew," in which even the handclaps are muted. There's a lot of air in the sweet ballad "Echo or Encore" and elsewhere; she keeps enough spareness in these songs that when she switches up the formula — as in the lush choruses of "She's a Mirror," the bouncy strum of "Stare at the Sun" or the flashes of distortion in "Tomorrow Tomorrow" — the joys and surprises hit that much harder.Camera Obscura's "Desire Lines" is also quite good.
If there's been a legitimate gripe against Camera Obscura, it's that it pulled punches in the service of a caricature of emotion. Desire Lines is more confident and direct than anything in the band's catalog. In "Do It Again," it's clear what the "it" is: "You were insatiable / I was more than capable," Campbell sings. "Turn down the lights now / let's do it again." This from a woman who once sang, "I drowned my sorrows, slept around / when not in body, at least in mind."
Not that she's turned her back on cataloging minor moments that feel significant. Campbell's modesty is intact in "I Missed Your Party," in which she apologizes to a suitor for declining an invitation in favor of staying home to watch Flashdance, listen to and attempt to read Walt Whitman. On this album, lust and chastity sound like equally honest parts of the same whole. The combination makes Desire Lines sound like a career best.
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