Let's Get Out of This Country

Studio album by Camera Obscura

Released

6 June 2006

Genre

Indie pop

Length

39:09

Label

Elefant, Merge

Producer

Jari Haapalainen

Camera Obscura chronology

Underachievers Please Try Harder
(2003)

Let's Get Out of This Country
(2006)

My Maudlin Career
(2009)

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	77/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B+
The Guardian
Mojo
NME	6/10
Pitchfork Media	7.8/10
PopMatters	7/10
Slant Magazine
Spin
Uncut

Let's Get Out of This Country is the third studio record by the Scottish indie pop band Camera Obscura, released by Elefant Records on 6 June 2006. It was recorded in Sweden with the producer Jari Haapalainen.

The album addresses themes of heartbreak, escapism and boredom. It received positive reviews from music critics, who noted that the band had distinguished themselves from Belle and Sebastian. Let's Get Out of This Country yielded four singles.

Following the 2003 release of Underachievers Please Try Harder, vocalist John Henderson left Camera Obscura in 2004. The band did not want to self-produce another record, and Stephen McRobbie of The Pastels recommended Jari Haapalainen, guitarist for The Bear Quartet. The band practiced for several weeks before travelling to work with Haapalainen for two weeks in Stockholm. Accustomed to recording over the course of multiple sessions, the band decided to take a more disciplined approach. They recorded 15 songs and selected 10 for the album, all of which were written by Tracyanne Campbell. Because of the short time in which the album was recorded, the final tracks closely resemble the original live recordings.

Let's Get Out of This Country marked a transition for the band from acoustic sounds to more upbeat rock. The music was influenced by the Motown Sound, Lee Hazlewood's collaborations with Nancy Sinatra and David Lynch's soundtracks. Haapalainen helped the band to modernize their sound and avoid the pastiche present in some of their earlier efforts.

Campbell, who was dealing with a breakup and the death of her grandmother, wrote many of the songs to be about heartbreak and lovelessness. The lyrics also deal with escapism and feelings of loneliness. Campbell named the American country singers Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette as influences. The album's title was chosen to reflect what she recalled as "being quite bored with myself and everything in my life, wanting to do something new and give myself a bit of a shake."

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Wikipedia