It's been nine months since the U.S. release of Underachievers Please Try Harder (Merge), Scottish bubblegum popsters Camera Obscura's politely titled second album, and while it would hardly be fair to expect a follow-up at greater speed than human gestation, it still feels like a small eternity. Such is the addictive nature of Underachievers, all swoon and sugar and woeful outlook on the world. Or maybe it's just the problem of passing time with a band born at college – where singer-guitarist Tracyanne Campbell met singer-percussionist John Henderson – yet lyrically submerged in situations and states of mind with the distinctively lonely, unsatisfied ring of adolescence.

Either way, it was nice of Merge to closely follow Underachievers with the first-time U.S. release of the band's debut album, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi, put out in Europe by Andmoresound in 2001. Biggest Bluest, like Underachievers, reveals a band unabashedly under the influence of Belle and Sebastian, who are less a ghostly presence and more like a guy (say, B&S's Stuart Murdoch, who produced the album's single "Eighties Fan") providing the hand claps from the back of the room. The lilts and rhythms of '60s girl groups and the shiny swirl of chamber pop strings follow Campbell's shy-girl vocals around, except at the close of the last track, "Arrangements of Shapes and Space," where a shoegazer band suddenly rises from the ashes of the album.

Going back in time was unlikely to erase the impression of being serenaded by brainy, jaded teenagers, the kind who've figured out that life is a series of dilemmas, mostly unresolvable but nonetheless worth spending one's free time debating. Camera Obscura's problems, sorrowfully disclosed or shrugged off, tend to involve falling in love with friends, falling in love with friends in love with other people, or watching friends fall into physical or psychic decline. On songs about "you and I," there's often a third party involved, as on "Houseboat," where Campbell and Henderson trade off verses and versions as another boy offstage takes up space and gets in the way. "I'm aware that friendship can die young," Campbell insists ominously on the opening track, "Happy New Year," on which the narrator seems to casually blindside someone with news of amorous intentions and the two trail off together in an ambiguous game of questions and answers. (Lynn Rapoport)