Obscurantism

Camera Obscura and Pony Up. Tuesday, February 6, at the Record Bar. (Sorry this is a day late. This chemical-cloud-of-dark-death thingy brought about an early sign-off yesterday.)

Let it go, Tracyanne, just let it go. Your songs are so pretty; don’t look so sour. Turn that frown upside down. Maybe if you did, then your Camera Obscura bandmates would, too, and some of you might start moving a little onstage, maybe nodding at people in the crowd, and then it wouldn’t seem to audiences that traveling around, playing your fine, garden-in-bloom pop to the world’s clubs felt to you like a prison sentence.

That was my impression after the first four or so songs, anyway. (A blog post by Happy in Bag, whom I saw down front the entire show, hints at a propensity of churlishness all the night long.) I was standing in the booth nearest the stage, peeking over phonograph memorabilia and empty glasses at the stage. The crowd was capacity. I thought I’d seen capacity before at the Record Bar, but, evidently, no, I hadn’t seen capacity. Fortunately, the kind of people who brave the conditions to see a band like Camera Obscura are gentle, sensitive types who bend like grass when you have to push past them. Which I did, as soon as I decided my glass had been empty too long and my ass was too sore from balancing on a cushioned seat to warrant watching a performance reminiscent of weekend PBS. I headed, in other words, for the back.