ISOBEL CAMPBELL & MARK LANEGAN
Ballad of the Broken Seas
V2 Records
· Pretending for a moment that the Screaming Trees never happened.
Mark Lanegan has had a good go of it the last few years, his junkyard crash, bang and warble creating some fine solo albums (Bubblegum) and moonlighting on others (Queens of the Stone Age). After leaving Belle & Sebastian, Isobel Campbell has continued on with the same snide (I mean, smart) folk-pop of her old band.
So, it’s with some hesitation that I greet the arrival of Ballad of the Broken Seas. In trying to imagine Lanegan’s voice, which sounds like he’s swallowed broken glass since he was a child, entwined with Campbell’s sex kitten whisper, I thought of the sounds two mismatched animals cruelly forced to breed and produce would make.
It turns out that this is probably the best folk album written by and for pirates. That is to say, sexy outlaw pirates who are falling in love. Lanegan and Campbell flirt with violin-tinged sweetness (the lovely "Honey Child What Can I Do?") to the country murder tune ("Revolver") and instrumental tack-piano dirges. Notable is the fantastic sleaze of "Ramblin’ Man" – Hank Williams’s drifter’s epistle gets a sinister reworking with Campbell’s ghostly voice stuck in the background.
There’s still the creepiness, though – as if a witty prepubescent girl is flirting with a stranger she met in a back alley. Just listen to Lanegan and Campbell sing the ballad "(Do you Wanna) Come Walk With Me?" both sweetly intoning "I’m not saying I love you/I’m not saying I’ll be true/There’s a crimson bird flying/When I go down on you." I think we all know what that means – if not, ask your older sibling what a rainbow kiss is.
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