Songs Of The Decade: French Navy by Camera Obscura

I miss the days where songs leap out of the radio and grab you. Hit me with a big drumroll or an immediate leap into the chorus. Sure, there's a lot of great new music out there, but I'm talking Big League Top 40 stuff. Hooks and hits, please.

Well, speaking of the Big Leagues, Scotland's Camera Obscura just got called up out of the minors, because they've finally put together everything they've been promising to do for three albums.

French Navy is the song that did it for me. The crack of the drum and the hit of the strings pulled me in and the opening gambit of "Spent a week in a dusty library, waiting for some words to jump at me" still forges a strong bond between ears, brain and speakers. Some lovely lyrical twists also continue to beguile. (I still want to finish the line "By the moon of a silvery lake" as "By the light of the silvery moon.")

This is girl-group pop for our time... if the Shangri-Las were novelists or something equally alluring.

French Navy is my Number 1 song of 2009, and is a major player for the decade to boot!