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Something about a sultry summer night at an open air venue like Washington D.C.'s Merriweather Post Pavilion reminds one of the Sixties, with its free festivals under the stars.
Seeing Aztec Camera in this situation is like being in a time warp. Poignant, acoustic and very folksy, this band's success (they're all the rage in England and their native Scotland) is an enigma or perhaps we're just ready for a revival of the simpler times that punk rock so violently assaulted with its " leave it in ruins" ethic.
On this evening, they're well received as they open for Elvis Costello (they'll be opening for Costello again in Baton Rouge September 5 and playing solo at Jimmy's September 4). After the set, I find myself climbing over the front seat of their tour van/ U-Haul into the company of Aztec Camera's founder and brain-stormer, Roddy Frame.
Frame is a gentle young Glaswegain in a flannel shirt and worn-out jeans. His face, with its marks of adolescence — afew fading pimples, a few newborn whiskers has the handsome, boy-next-door features of a young Paul Weller.
"Funny you should say that," observes drummer and George Sanders look-alike Dave Ruffy. "Paul Weller really likes Roddy — but Roddy doesn't like Paul Weller. It's kind of pathetic. Weller'll follow the band all over, and Roddy won't have anything to do with him."
Perhaps Roddy sees in Weller the kind of antisocial pop culture idol he wants to avoid becoming. Quiet and self-assured at 18, Roddy is apparently unimpressed by his band's sudden U.K. success. Formed 3½ years ago by a 18-year-old Roddy weaned on Hunky Dory-period Bowie, the Sex Pistols, and folk of the Woodie Guthrie persuasion, Aztec Camera — Roddy (vocals/ guitar), Cambell Owens (bass), Graig Gannon, (rhythm guitar), and Dave Ruffy (drums) — see the present as nothing more than on the way to achieving future goals.
"We've already started doing some new songs," Roddy comments. "I felt really rushed on this album. Our next one'll have more of a theme running through it. I want to hold onto the things we do that are good-the simplicity of the music — but play better, much more direct. As you make more records, your ideas become more solid, which is good. But we're determined to avoid the problem most bands have where their second album is usually really bad — the ideas stay unrealised."
You understand Aztec Camera better when you discover how young Roddy is. His lyrics, couched in sweet but somewhat undirected melodies, are untouched by the cynicism that comes of experience.
"My songs are just loads of observations, really. But I do think they're very personal, because it's all very subjective.
"I'm trying to be very direct-like folk music, where there's no ambiguity."
Shying away from ambiguity in his music and his lyrics, Roddy eschews the dense layers of harmony that make so much " new music" continuously provocative. Instead, he pens sparse, uncomplicated melodies for guitar, voice, and bass, underlain (not driven) by Dave's competent, controlled drumming. In performance, on vinyl and more apparently onstage, the melodies, stunning in their individuality, are badly mixed, undermining the overall continuity of the songs. Aztec Camera songs, more often than not, hang like half-done paintings- suggesting a complete picture, but only delivering random strokes.
Because Aztec Camera offers a sound quite unlike the sterile funk of England's seemingly endless stream of synthpopsters, the band's extremely vocal dedication to Roddy's "Folk of the '80s," oblivious as it is to fashion trends, grabs the attention by virtue of its very peculiarity.
The band's acoustic approach has got them branded "60s revivalists" by a UK. rock press that loves to hand out labels.
"Hopefully it's just because we're very traditional. We'll never pretend we're doing anything new- but I don't think it should be called 'Revival'. I'm just trying to carry on music like the folk musicians started... a tradition that goes really far back. We play so that hopefully other people can sing along."
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