Glasgow is not just home to Glaswegian icons like the Rangers, Teacher’s Highland Cream, organ meats, the Glasgow School of Art, and Saint Mungo.  The city is also the headquarters of the deliciously melodic indie-pop six-piece, Camera Obscura.  With a pallette that ranges from Nick Drake to Heavenly, Petula Clark to Trembling Blue Stars, Camera Obscura churns out mirthful chamber pop that can charm the wits out of you.  “Underachievers Please Try Harder” is the band’s second full length, following a 2002 release, “Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.”  “Underachievers” was first issued in 2003, and is now available stateside with bonus material through Merge.  It’s a splendid outing.  Camera Obscura’s lead female vocalist Traceyanne Campbell blends her innocent-as-a-school-girl vocals (think Saint Etienne or Birdie) with surprisingly sophisticated lyrics.  It’s a recipe that has worked well for Belle and Sebastian, and it’s no less effective here.  Stuart Murdoch, of B&S, has even offered his skills as a producer for Camera Obscura in the past.  This time around Murdoch lends a hand with the CD’s photography.  The connections between the Edinburgh-based B&S and Camera Obscura are pretty extensive.  In fact, Camera Obscura sounds so much like B&S that accusations of plagiarism wouldn’t be all that off the mark.  Perhaps such direct similarities have more to do with both bands’ common tastes and obsessions: English-folk, Sarah Records, C-86 pop.  Doubts concerning “Underachievers” are quickly brushed aside by utterly remarkable songs like “Keep it Clean,” or the Birdie-esque “Number One Son,” a marvelous orch-pop tour de force.  In summary, for fans of breezy indie pop, this disc is a must have.

-Randall J. Stephens 

Elvis Costello lite.  That’s the first thing that comes to mind after hearing “The Unstudied Sea.”  Not necessarily pejorative.  Frank Bango writes the same kind of enchanting, sentimental melodies that brought Costello international fame and critical attention.  Bango’s  work is more in line with Costello’s softer side -- less “No Action” or Radio, Radio,” and more “Alison.” Bango, whose first CD was on Not Lame Records, offers up an endless supply of pretty, sweet little power pop morsels.  The saccharine quality will grate on some, as will Bango’s nasally, cheeky vocals.  Indeed, some of the same criticisms that were once leveled against Costello could be applied to Bango, making the similarities even greater.  Regardless, Bango scores big with the edgy and intense “Leaving the Scene of an Accident” – a kind of Wedding Present meets Jeremy Enigk number – and the potent and beautiful “A Clear Eye for Daisy,” which recalls Neil Finn’s top notch solo work from the 1990s.  After repeated listens, “The Unstudied Sea” comes off as a record that is well arranged, sophisticated, and rich with nostalgia and charm.      

-Randall J. Stephens

Ken Greenhouse, a.k.a. Casaverde, has been rocking his home studio, multi-track in great obscurity for years now.  Based in Williamsburg, New York, Greenhouse is a lone ranger riding his home recorder and borrowing from a host of sources.  For the most part, though, he sounds not quite like anyone else.  Still much of this disc is pretty run-of-the-mill, and occasionally degenerates into uninspired generic rock.  Greenhouse has his moments though.  He is certainly at his best on the album’s opener, “Too Little too Late.”  The track is a light-hearted romp-- Greenhouse adds jaunty touches of Herman’s Hermits and the Four Seasons for good measure.  The song is quite reminiscent of some of the recent stripped back pop of the Shins or the Hidden Cameras.  Most of Greenhouse’s forays into mid-tempo pop are successful.  By contrast, his attempts to write harder, edgier material fall far short.  “The Buzzard Hovers Over” is some sort of MC5 experiment gone horribly wrong.  And “You Want A lot” sounds like a pretty standard alternative, bar rock turd.  It’s wallpaper, to mix up metaphors.  Had Greenhouse stuck to the poppier formula, this disc would have benefited tremendously.  Nonetheless, there is some promise here.

-Randall J. Stephens              

Head of Femur is occasionally compared to the Beach Boys.  The group bares only a slight actual resemblance to their illustrious predecessors.  In some murky way, Head of Femur sounds more like the Beach Boys filtered through avant-indie groups from the provincial fringe of Great Britain: Super Furry Animals, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Mull Historical Society, and Coral.  Those outfits, and Head of Femur, take more cues from “Smile” than from “Pet Sounds.”  Hence, they are bent on willfully obscuring and reshuffling their song structures at every turn.  Is it a whole new sort of prog-rock resurgence?  Music for those chronically short of attention span?  Lobotomized indie rock operas with hydroponic weed for a muse?  Whatever it might be, it’s certainly an enjoyable mess.  Head of Femur fit well in this as-yet undefined subgenre.  “Ringodom of Proctor,” the band’s first full length, is a sprawling epic, and a sometimes chaotic, orch-pop carnival.  The songs morph from one to another with such surprising ease.  The album avoids the bloated self indulgence often associated with such enterprises.  In fact, “Ringodom” comes across as stunningly sincere, even intimate despite all the power pop grandeur.  In this since, the disc is not all that different from that of the New Pornographers or the Flaming Lips.  All in all, a wonderful first outing from these Nebraska natives.  

-Randall J. Stephens