Camera Shy Cassette

Album Details

Before they came to be known as Camera Shy, Nick Bassett and Alexandra Morte had been working on crafting warm weather indie pop indebted with influence to the Smiths, the Sundays and Sarah Records catalogs while the pair made loud, shoegazing punk together in Bassett’s band, Whirr. While the Bay Area act has moved onto a darker terrain since Morte’s departure, she and Bassett have remained a creative unit that serves as a brighter outlet to contrast the caustic dreariness Whirr indulges. Camera Shy’s first exhale of melancholy bedroom pop arrived properly on last year’s Jack-O-Lantern EP, and now, Bassett and Morte refine their soft start with their eponymous debut full-length for Run for Cover Records. For this effort, the pair reunited in Bassett’s adopted hometown of Philadelphia alongside producer Arthur Rizk where they glossed over stripped, jangled guitars, high-hats and brass with rich, shimmering results. On “Colors Radiate” and “New Something,” Morte’s vocals swirl clandestinely in the sun around Bassett’s clean-cut strumming with upbeat romantic optimism. “Glowing” and “Seemingly Ill” alternatively tug slowly at dreams of longing into a starlit sky. The duality of Camera Shy ultimately rests its lens between slumbering look-backs and forward momentum. Balancing today’s white noise with something less complex can render equally stunning results, and for Bassett and Morte, Camera Shy is that desire.