Bring the hankies and dancing shoes

Scottish indie-pop band Camera Obscura. Photo / Supplied

Camera Obscura have been floating around Glasgow's indie music scene for more than a decade, but it was only last year they were able to quit their jobs and be full-time musicians.

Their latest album My Maudlin Career received a blanket of rave reviews, and the band has been touring full-time since.

Despite the swelling fanbase, keyboard and back-up vocalist Carey Lander says the band is still really surprised when anyone turns up to a gig. "We're a bit pessimistic about it but it's been really good so far."

Camera Obscura formed in 1996 after Gavin Dunbar and lead singer Tracyanne Campbell met in a record store, and the present five-piece is the result of a series of additions and farewells.

Lander, who at 27 is the youngest member, was the last to join in 2001.

She is coy and softly spoken, much like the other four band members, who come across as a bunch of highly intelligent but slightly awkward thrift-shoppers. "We are not very trendy," Lander says.

"I think we are all a little bit self-conscious to be honest. We're not huge show-offs on stage and generally reviews in the press can be quite daunting. Sometimes you just feel like a total bore [in interviews] ," she says, adding: "I'm better after a drink anyway, that's true."

After releasing My Maudlin Career in April, the five-piece quit their jobs - ranging from social work to bar tending - to tour full-time. Their 2010 schedule includes New Zealand, Australia, Asia and the States until the end of April - about 30 shows in total.

"You just want time to do it properly - it might not last forever but you want a proper run at it.

"Going on tour for a month and then coming back and going straight back to work is just not the best way to live," Lander says.

Camera Obscura finds it hard to place themselves in a genre, though reviewers call their songs anything from 50s beach-pop to melancholy and sentimental folk.

"It's not that we think we are so special that we don't think we should be classified as anything but it's hard not to feel slightly limited when it happens," Lander says.

Advertisements warn the audience to bring hankies as well as dancing shoes, as Campbell's bittersweet accounts of romance can stir intense emotions.

But Lander promises a mixed bag: "Don't come expecting 20 miserable, quiet hanky songs," she says.

And don't come expecting anything more than a talented and passionate group of Scottish musicians.

"We are perhaps not the most visually dynamic band on stage but we are what we are.

"If people come and see us and enjoy it then good, and if they don't, then they can go and watch something else."

Lowdown

Who: Camera Obscura
What: Scottish indie-pop band
Albums: Biggest Bluest High-Fi (2001), Underachievers Please Try Harder (2003), Let's Get Out of This Country (2006), My Maudlin Career (2009).
Where & when: Playing at the Montecristo Room with Slow Club on Monday.