We’ve all got baggage. My Heart Is a Room With No Cameras in It, the second album from Brooklyn musician Julian McCamman’s Victoryland, is loaded with the stuff: a heap of fragmentary memories, cast-off objects, and shameful urges out in the open for all to see. After getting his start as the rhythm guitarist for now-defunct Philadelphia band Blood, McCamman left the city on a quest for pop songwriting perfection. The Philly DIY scene knows a thing or two about smuggling big-time singalongs inside raucous punk; My Heart polishes these melodies and brings them to the fore, preserving their emotional catharsis but wrapping them in open-hearted innocence instead of righteous conviction. It’s a bright, madcap approach reminiscent of the New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Some Loud Thunder.
Though My Heart presents as loose and impulsive, it’s the undeniable product of McCamman and producer Dan Howard’s work in the studio. The panning background wail of electric guitar in “I got god” provides the melodic seal for McCamman’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics; the way his vocal echoes in circles on the word “ostinato” codifies its meaning in sound. “Fits,” an LCD Soundsystem-style dance cut that swaps synths for guitars, maintains the illusion of perpetual motion thanks to its finely interlocked grooves. The studio magic helps the album shine, though its more traditional rock fare, like “Arcades” or the back half of “You Were Solved,” are missing the tension of a live band to really get off the ground.
What holds My Heart together is McCamman’s voice, located somewhere between the slurred goofiness of Western Mass weirdo LUCY (Cooper B. Handy) and Britt Daniels’ slack-jawed roving. On “No Cameras,” he throws it up and down the chorus, lending it an air of desperation that drives home his calls to be seen. But he’s capable of softer moments too, like on “Blur,” where his quaver reflects the fragility of the myths we adopt to get by. As a lyricist, McCamman oscillates between pregnant abstract imagery (“I got a mouth full of broken homes”) and unflinchingly forward proclamations (“Porn ain’t got what you want”), with his shambolic yowl tying the knot between the two. His style only feels out of place on the brief piano ballad “Beach Death,” its delicate keystrokes unable to withstand his walloping “settle downs.”
My Heart’s parting image is one of human connection, of the moment at a party when you look at the person you’ve been talking to and realize you don’t want to stop. “Show me yours/I’ll show you mine,” McCamman sings on the closing track, before a rush of compressed strings sweeps in, as if to forecast all the pain and beauty that await on the other side of his decision. Rather than cringing back, he goes for broke: “Show me some/I’ll show you more.” In a world filled with cynicism and surveillance, My Heart Is a Room With No Cameras in It stands naked, flaws bared, inviting anyone brave enough to return its embrace.
