Carey Lander of Camera Obscura has died at 33.

Carey Lander, the keyboardist and backing vocalist of the Scottish band Camera Obscura since 2002, died of osterosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, three days ago.

She started a page to raise money for Sarcoma UK, a bone and soft-tissue cancer charity, saying:

In 2011 I was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in my leg. It's an aggressive form of bone cancer that's treated with a very harsh regime of chemotherapy and surgery or possible amputation of the affected limb. Particularly horribly, it's a cancer that most commonly occurs in children and because of its rarity, receives scarce attention or funding and there has been very little in the way of new treatments developed in the last 30 years. It's probably too late to help me, but it would be great if we could find something in the future that means children don't have to undergo such awful treatment and have a better chance of survival.

I highly recommend Camera Obscura's third album, Let's Get Out of This Country.

When I listed the top 100 songs of the past decade, I put Camera Obscura's "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken" at #24, and said:

When I listen to Camera Obscura, I imagine a band from the early '60s traveling through time to the '00s and trying to fit in.

I also listed "Let's Get Out of This Country" as a "runner-up" to the top 100 songs. You can see Carey Lander (the only woman in the band other than the singer) in the video:

The 100 best songs of the first decade of the 2000s (40-31)

(Click here for the whole list.)


40. Daniel Merriweather — "For Your Money"

Sean Lennon plays some nice guitar leads on this.




39. Faded Paper Figures — "North by North"

I love the male/female vocal harmonies in this song.




38. Polydream — "Hollywood"

(Full disclosure: I'm friends with them.)




37. Bat for Lashes — "Daniel"




36. Mika — "Grace Kelly"

And here's a solo unplugged live performance.




35. Grizzly Bear — "Two Weeks"




34. Sara Bareilles— "Love Song"

Here a few of the main questions I've asked myself in selecting the songs:

1) Is it capable of giving me chills? (Or: does it emotionally affect me?)

2) Is it capable of getting stuck in my head?

3) Do I enjoy listening to the singer's voice?

4) Does the music have some sort of dramatic arc or development? (A bridge or other deviation from "verse/chorus/verse/chorus" is especially helpful.)

5) Is there a sense of "inevitability" — that is, does each note seem to lead naturally to the next?

A song where I'd answer "Yes" to all those questions is probably a good contender for the list. A song where I'd answer "No" to most of those questions probably won't be on the list.

This song — which has a casually effervescent quality that reminds me of Paul McCartney — gets a "Yes" answer to all 5 questions.




33. Dntel — "(This Is) the Dream of Evan and Chan"

This song was created by the same lineup as The Postal Service.

Another blog, The Factual Opinion, ranked this the best song of the decade, saying:

The 2001 people imagined decades ago must have sounded like this--the electronic squall, the nearly overwhelming surge of drums, the drifting grasp on reality. ... 8 years on, “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan” sounds like a future that we still haven't caught up with.

The Factual Opinion quotes the line, "He then played every song from 1993," and says, "I always imagine that he’s talking about hearing every song from 1993, from 'Whoomp (There It Is)' to 'Mr. Jones.'" Although that's what the line would seem to literally mean, I always imagine that he's talking about Kurt Cobain in the last full year of his life, and "every song from 1993" means every one of his songs from 1993 — in other words, In Utero, Nirvana's last studio album. That's why (I imagine) Ben Gibbard wittily accentuates the next line, which I hear as a reference to Cobain's famously conflicted feelings about his own success: "The crowd applauded as he curtsied bashfully."




32. The New Pornographers — "The Laws Have Changed"

It's always fun to hear both A.C. Newman and Neko Case singing lead in the same song.




31. Camera Obscura — "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"

When I listen to Camera Obscura, I imagine a band from the early '60s traveling through time to the '00s and trying to fit in.

Buddy Holly, the original, immortal nerd rocker

"One of the main things about the Beatles is that we started out writing our own material. People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, 'Wow! He writes and is a musician.'"

— Paul McCartney

"When I was 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory [three days before he died] and I was three feet away from him, and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was — I don't know how or why — but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."

— Bob Dylan, on recording his album Time Out of Mind

Buddy Holly died 50 years ago. He was 22.

He got as close as anyone has to the essence of rock 'n' roll: saying a lot with the sparest of elements, and not caring if you seem like a bit of a fool as long as you say what you mean.

No one will ever do what he did again. He has many imitators, but no one can do it with that purity and innocence anymore; there are always added layers of irony or allusion.




Of the many originators of rock from the '50s, Buddy Holly had one of the most enduring voices. I'd rank him, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley in a class of their own. And no one else had so much potential cut off.




So let's listen to some of those who've carried on the 50-year heritage of simple nerd rock:

Talking Heads — "And She Was" …




They Might Be Giants — "Don't Let's Start" …




Camera Obscura — "Let's Get out of This Country" …




Weezer — "Buddy Holly" …




Death Cab for Cutie — "I Will Follow You into the Dark."




UPDATE: My mom (Ann Althouse) suggests another song.

Music Friday: Older albums I've been listening to

So far all the Music Friday posts have been about here's-what's-going-on-right-now music. To mix things up, here are some older albums I've recently acquired and have been delving into.

The Art of Noise -- Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise? -- Prototypical noisy art.

The Sugarcubes (photo to the right) -- The Great Crossover Potential -- Pretty good new-wave music by the pre-Bjork Bjork. (I don't do accents.)

Pavement -- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain -- The indie-est of indie-dom.

Charles Mingus -- Cornell 1964 -- 2 CDs, released last year. My favorite jazz musician playing with the great Eric Dolphy at my alma mater, with an emphasis on half-hour-long jams. Apparently this recording was recently unearthed, having been lost for decades.

ELO -- Greatest Hits -- I got this mostly because I think "Livin' Thing" (video below) is one of the all-time greatest rock songs by someone who's not one of the greats ... which could be a pretty good blog post unto itself some other time. This would be a good companion album to the most recent album by Camera Obscura (from an earlier Music Friday).



(Photo of the Sugarcubes from this post on Grapejuice Plus.)

Music I've been listening to: Camera Obscura, Andrew Bird, Jaga Jazzist, Hanne Hukkelberg

For the first two Music Fridays, I talked about a few of the most exciting new bands/artists I've been listening to lately. Here are some quicker snapshots of other new music that I highly recommend ("new" as in the last few years -- my musical tastes exist on a pretty wide time-scale, as does this very blog).

As usual, each YouTube link goes to one of their songs (in extra-large format -- click on the screen if you want the regular format), and each MySpace link goes to their official profile with free streaming songs.

Camera Obscura -- throwback to '60s girl groups with a jaded '00s twist

[youtube - Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken]

[myspace]

Andrew Bird (photo below) -- guitarist / violinist / whistler / singer / songwriter extraordinaire

[youtube - A nervous tic motion of the head to the left]

[myspace]

[complete concert]

Jaga Jazzist -- electronic jazz, or jazzy electronica (instrumental)

[myspace]

Hanne Hukkelberg -- slinky singing over quirky instrumentation

[myspace]

[complete concert]

(Photo of Andrew Bird from his MySpace.)