CAMERA OBSCURA + SIMON BREED
Notting Hill Arts Club
8th December 2001
An impressively large crowd for the last proper ROTA session of the year. Unfortunately this has its disadvantages as the bands today are quite quiet and there's an awful lot of chat going on.
Simon Breed, formerly of the fine Clawfist-signed band Breed, has to battle a bit to be heard. His music comes from the same dark place as his previous band, yet if anything it's more atmospheric than before, the whole sound centred around acoustic guitar, the odd bit of keyboard (I think!) and brushed drums. It's difficult to tell what else is being used as I can't see a thing!
Simon's songs are really impressive and, rather than just appearing as a run-of-the-mill acoustic singer-songwriter, he colours his songs with a lot of what I would call 'acoustic feedback'. The howlround you get from an acoustic guitar can be very nasty, and for a few minutes you don't know whether this is deliberate or not, but it ends up working surprisingly well. I missed the early part of his set but I'm impressed by what I do see, and the last song in particular is magnificent.
He comes across liek a seedier, more English Will Oldham but today I think that the environment didn't really do him justice, so hopefully I'll get to see him again soon.
Camera Obscura are a Scottish band that I know very little about. They play kind of gentle, melodic indie, they don't play too loud, they have both male and female vocals and occasional trumpet, so Belle and Sebastian is the obvious (and really lazy) comparison.
Although a lot of people are here to see them, they also have to battle with the crowd noise, and at one stage the female singer says "You can shut up or get out!" Unfortunately most people couldn't hear her.
It's a shame that I'm not more familiar with their songs because on this first hearing they're just too close to Belle and Sebastian to really stand out. I have to say though, that I think Camera Obscura's female singer is stronger than Isabel from B+S/ Gentle Waves, and consequently she takes most of the vocals. However, to really make an impact they're going to have to be more distinctive, and shake off such obvious comparisons.
