Folkloric sensations and soothing incantations: The Local Orchestra, the new album from Camille Dávila is like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
Release Date: 17th June 2024
Label: 3530096 Records DK2
Formats: CD / Vinyl / Digital
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY
Every so often, an album comes around that makes any listener re-evaluate any points of musical reference they may have previously relied upon. The Local Orchestra, the new album from international songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer, producer and arranger, Camille Dávila, is one such album.
The album’s press release describes it as: “A wild mix of whirling symphonic mayhem mixed with old-world vibrations, folkloric sensations and soothing incantations” and comments that “…It sounds like it was created in some parallel universe where Nick Drake created Joni Mitchell’s Blue and Syd Barrett sang in unison with Nico – yet somehow it sounds entirely original. And entertaining.”
Now, anyone who reads as many press releases as I do, learns to take such hyperbole with a large pinch of salt but, this time, the product certainly lives right up to the billing. The Local Orchestra is an album like no other. It’s unique, it’s mightily challenging and it’s utterly, utterly charming.
CAMILLE DÁVILA
Born in Los Angeles and now spending much of her time in Europe, notably in England, Germany, Norway and Spain, Camille Dávila is a singular talent, indeed. She’s made four previous albums over a recording career that spans more than two decades and, prior to The Local Orchestra, her previous recorded output – Divided Sky, her collaboration with famed Norwegian producer HP Gundersen – came out as long ago as 2013.
Camille has attracted some high-powered supporters over the years, that’s for sure. Jeff Lynne has been known to speak highly of her work and Van Dyke Parks, a collaborator on The Local Orchestra – he wrote the arrangement to one of the songs – once told her: “Your music, finely crafted, your work shows a fusion of analogue and synthetic sources. I heartily approve of your decisions, and hope this finds you with much wind in your sails, wherever you are. Light Perpetual fall upon you!” And, as if such high and mighty support isn’t sufficient, Camille was also encouraged by none other than Tony Visconti to write the string arrangements to this latest collection of her songs.
THE WRITING AND RECORDING
The Local Orchestra has had a lengthy gestation. Camille had been writing intensively before, during and after lockdown, producing a veritable mountain of new material, and she was helped by Jeron Gundersen of The Neutrinos to select the best of the bunch for inclusion on the album. Recording took place in Norway, before the tapes were shipped to Spain for mixing, then back to the UK for mastering. It seems that an album as singular as The Local Orchestra doesn’t have an easy birth.
THE SONGS
The Local Orchestra is awash with vivid sounds and surreal lyrics. Piano, cello and voice are intertwined comfortably and sparkling keyboard, harp, guitars and theremin are all called upon to add texture as and where required. Sometimes, as on opening track, Work – the song with the Van Dyke Parks arrangement – the strings and vocals sound as though they were sourced from two separate worlds. Camille’s lyrics can be hilarious – and that’s certainly the case in Old Shoe, a song in which a shoe that’s about to be discarded reminds its wearer of the use it’s been, with words like: “I’m not a slipper, but I fit like a glove – it wasn’t my fault that you tripped and you fell, smacking your face.” It’s excellent!
It’s not all hilarity, though. Camille’s lyrics can also be somewhat unsettling, as on the slow piano ballad, Paint; they can be whimsical – the Syd Barrett comparison is particularly evident in Polkadot Dreams, a psychedelic waltz with a dreamy French feel, or, often, they can be completely impenetrable – the sparkly East Angle, the dreamlike Preludium and the pastoral Lemons (in which Camille asks: “Did horse shoes and hand grenades put lime in your lemonade this time?”) are all cases in point. But it all holds a tremendous fascination, and it’s all thoroughly entertaining.
On every song, Camille’s voice is high in the mix. Often intimate, sometimes vulnerable and always alluring, there’s a slight shade of Karen Carpenter to her delivery and it’s a genuine shock when she sings “Why the fuck…” in Paint. Now that’s a phrase that Karen never committed to tape…
The Local Orchestra is an album that demands repeated listens. The immediacy in songs like Work does, perhaps, hit the spot straight away, but there’s a subtlety to many of these songs that will, I strongly suspect, result in a more lasting satisfaction; perhaps the best such example is the eerie-sounding Blue Deluge. The lap steel guitar is delightful and the cello and plucked strings (guitar? harp?) are perfectly balanced.
The Local Orchestra isn’t an album with mainstream appeal but, to those prepared to listen and enjoy, it’s an album that will deliver lasting pleasure.
Watch the official video to Running – a track from the album – here:
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