By Kirsten Hammermeister
There’s something a little ‘2006’ about the year 2026 and I think it has something to do with the enduring charm of the twee aesthetic. Although people often associate twee (at least in its revival) with the late noughts and 2010s (Zooey Deschanel, owl necklaces, movies like Juno and Moonrise Kingdom), it is the music of twee pop that I want to address and the nineties and noughts saw this genre in its prime.
In actuality, twee arose in 1980s UK as a reaction to the harshness sonically in post-punk scene. Sarah Records, an independent record label in Bristol from 1987 to 1995, housed acts like Tallulah Gosh and The Field Mice who were instrumental in the formation of twee pop. The music they were making was lush, dreamy and sweetly melodic. Then came the likes of Heavenly and Velocity Girl.
Now, as you might have already gleaned from popular twee aesthetics, the genre (in music and other domains) borrowed from the 1960s. This made for an innocent and whimsy soundscape, jangly guitars and often overlaid with boy-girl harmonies. When twee really popped off in the alternative music scene in the 90s-00s, this was especially true for acts like had Belle and Sebastian and The Moldy Peaches.
And, of course, we arrive at Camera Obscura who had worked with that boy-girl harmony formula for a while but moving onto their third album Let’s Get Out of This Country (2006) there was a shift. Camera Obscura, hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, formed in 1996 with original members Tracyanne Campbell, John Henderson and Gavin Dunbar , and claimed their place in the new generation of twee. In November 2001, they released debut album Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, followed by Underachievers Please Try Harder in August 2003.
Camera Obscura released their third album Let’s Get Out of This Country on June 6 2006. It
was the first album by the band to chart, coming in at 125 on the UK charts. The album was recorded over the course of two weeks in Sweden with producer Jari Jaapalainen. Haapalainen (who played lead guitar for Swedish rock group The Bear Quartet) also produced Camera Obscura’s fourth album My Maudlin Career (2009) and and their sixth Look to the East, Look to the West (2024).
The singles released for the album were Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken, Let’s Get
Out of This Country, If Looks Could Kill and Tears for Affairs. By 2006, co-lead singer and percussionist John Henderson had left the band but the voice of Camera Obscura was as sure as it ever had been led by Tracyanne Campbell. Jonathan Perry wrote of the album for The Boston Globe in 2006, describing it as: a disc of romantic bliss and delicious heartache, dressed up in silver-spangled melodies, roller-rink keyboards, and zesty brass and string accents.
There is an element of dreamlike imagination in the album. Music and lyrics that swell like
our own minds imagining what it might be like if our heartbreak were simply illusory or if
the ability to escape from the mundanities and anxieties of our lives were simpler than the
snap of our fingers. Like in the wistfulness in the album’s first single (the title of which a response to a 1984 track by Llyod Cole and the Commotions):
“Hey Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken 'Cause I can't see further than my own nose at this moment I've got my life of complication here to sort out I'll take myself to an east coast city and walk about”
Tracyanne describes a restlessness in everyday life:
“What does the city have to offer me? I just can't see” — ‘Let’s Get Out of This Country’
Chatting with Tracyanne Campbell in 2006 for Pitchfork, Brian Howe asked: How literally should we interpret Let's get out of this country, Are you burned out on Scotland at this point? To which Tracyanne responded: "I was just kind of burned out in general, with lots of things, just generally quite miserable and unhappy. I needed to give myself a kick up the backside and change some things and stop living my life so safely."
When asked whether she had been successful in this, Tracyanne replied with: “I think so.”
Let’s Get Out of This Country ranked 118 in Pitchfork’s List ‘The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s’, speaking to the resonance of the album for its time and for its genre and perhaps of the feelings shared by listeners, a relation to Tracyanne’s dissatisfaction. My Maudlin Career (2009) and Desire Lines (2013) saw even greater success for the band worldwide and it was supremely clear that the Glasgow group were an exciting and foundational part of Scottish pop. In 2015, the band cancelled gigs that they had scheduled in North America because of member Carey Lander’s illness. She was first diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2011 and had announced it had returned 4 years later. She sadly passed in October 2015.
From then, Camera Obscura took a hiatus. However, in 2019, the band started live performances again in a boat weekender event curated by Belle and Sebastian. Tracyanne spoke of her feelings in 2024 on the hiatus and the eventual return of the band in an interview with Rachel Brodsky for Stereogum. She said, “When the band went to play the Boaty Weekender […] That's when I realized, Wow, we really are loved as a band. We actually really mean something to people. Not that I didn't think we meant something, but I think when you're caught up in it and you're getting on with it and it's your life and you're in a band, make records and play gigs…But when it's taken away — which it was Carey [Lander] dying, me having a child, the band having a hiatus — it was taken away, and I realized how much it actually meant to me...when we went on that boat, it was the nicest feeling. It was the most inspiring thing that happened in a long, long time.”
Since the Boaty Weekender in Barcelona and release of their 2024 album Look to The East, Look to The West, the band have returned to touring across the UK, Europe and North America. On May 8 2026, the band celebrated the 25th anniversary of their debut album Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi with a vinyl re-issue via Merge Records. (I also highly recommend checking out this album - Let’s Go Bowling is one of my favourite songs ever).
There’s something so timeless and honest about twee pop and Camera Obscura are at the heart an ever-blossoming future of music. Twee pop is playful with its pessimism:
“Don't you worry, don't get in a state I don't believe in true love, anyway” - Country Mile.
It' s attitude remains present in laptop twee (coined by Kiernan Press-Reynolds) with acts like Bassvictim and Frost Children. Its music that looks to nostalgia to come to terms with the present. In a present that continues to incite rage, twee pop asks us to see through a lens of hope, one not too unlike from our days of childhood.
Camera Obscura closed their third album with ‘Razzle Dazzle Rose’ after the Crayola crayon. It’s in this song that Tracyanne’s bittersweet vocals are echoed by a French horn:
“Rose, I'm feeling older, Courage, my love, will make me bolder Expecting softness can lead to foolishness When I choose my color, it will Be Razzle Dazzle Rose What colour will we choose?"
As if to ask, when we make an important decision, perhaps the question on how we will
decide to live our life, how can we show courage? I think this imagery of the crayon, entwines itself with childhood. One might think that to listen to the whims of what we believed when we are young is foolish. But there is a challenge to this in this song, Camera Obscura allows us to consider that perhaps these hopes are not as flimsy as whims but reflective of an internal assuredness that we can always return to. Perhaps a part of the endurance of twee and, through its continual revival and formation of new twee-adjacent music, is the desire to return to a ‘millennial optimism’, or childlike wonder, or a way to aspire like we do in dreams, however you want to define it, own your own terms. It is this mindset, I suspect, like in many times before ours, that will come in handy in days like these.