You know when you wake-up in the morning and your guts are churning and a big fuck-off bull is running around your skull, real pissed-off and wanting to break-free and you don’t have a love-life and your job stinks and life stinks and everything stinks? Well, PlanetNotion reckons that sticking on Camera Obscura’s new album, My Maudlin Career, lets you know that, sure, all of the above are true, but what the hell does it matter anyway? Get up, get out and get down the pub, because today is a NEW DAY with new beginnings and, probably not a new job but the end of your current one. Mainly, though, the theme of the album appears to be the effect love has on an individual. It’s a collection of love songs for the degenerate generation, delivered in a not-so degenerate way. It’s for the guys and gals who think the first port of call when God’s thrown a fish needle in your eye, is to get fucked-up and worry about the consequences when the come-down hits you. It’s sweet and twee and might even make you cry, mainly due to Tracyanne Campbell’s stunning delivery. Opening track French Navy treads down the indie-pop road, happy and cheerful, only exploring the dilemma of love vs. life. The Sweetest Thing kicks off like a lost track from the closet of Brian Wilson, exploring a relationship that has come and passed. It’s a song about whoever Tracyanne is singing about fucking off and leaving her to deal with rejection alone, probably downing bottles of vino by the gallon and popping pills like a manic-depressive-stay-at-home-house-wife. Then you’ve got Careless Love, which seems to be about those guys or gals you start seeing more as a pity-fuck than anything else and it hurts so bad when you ditch them, because they’re probably hurting so bad, that you “Don’t think we can even be friends.” And that’s basically the road the whole album treads down. Pain, rejection, love gained, love lost, depression and nights at home watching Desperate Housewives and having a wank. Course, we could be wrong, but that’s what we got from it. A quite beautiful album. Dave Dryden

My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura’s debut album under record label 4AD, is released April 20th 2009