Indie-pop veterans Camera Obscura can still get their fans excited when it comes time to release a new album. That time has come again with the Scottish sextet’s fourth studio album. CO has been that one band throughout the years with songs that are OK to have stuck in your head for a long period of time. Even though they’ve stuck to the same trademark dream-pop-meets-doo-wop sound that has defined them for so long, it’s impossible to hate them.

The word maudlin translates to being foolishly sentimental, a theme that has been consistent with each CO album, but has never been blatantly touched upon until now. While 2006’s Let’s Get Out Of This Country allowed us to sample a slice of that emotive pie, My Maudlin Career allows us to indulge ourselves in the misery. The album follows the storyline of a fleeting romance slipping through the cracks, with opening track “French Navy” setting the stage for a bitter break-up. It then begins to explore the attitude and sentiment of letting someone go through singer Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrics in “The Sweetest Thing” when she intones, “I’m going on a date tonight to try to fall out of love with you.” This theme continues right through the meat of the album before it ends on an uplifting and heartening high note with “Honey In The Sun,” which gives the listener a late, but much-needed reprieve from the bleak mood of the ten previous tracks.

Every album has been one solid work of art after another; mostly due to CO's “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” songwriting code. Leave it to Campbell to craft flawless prose to match the swinging and fluttering melodies the rest of the band brings to form one neat little package that makes them so irresistible, and never easy to dismiss. - Nick Truden