18 years on, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan remain the best torch bearers for sweet and sour dusty ballads.
Originally released in 2006, “Ballad Of The Broken Seas” saw the unlikely pairing of Scotland’s Isobel Campbell, best known for her contributions to Belle & Sebastian, and Mark Lanegan, the unbridled primal voice of Screaming Trees. The sweet and sour combination of their voices and the depth of the songwriting led to much acclaim, the record was shortlisted for The Mercury Prize that year.
Inevitably, comparisons were made with the songs which Lee Hazlewood recorded with Nancy Sinatra. There was a similar construct, the idea of beauty and the beast singing together while the songs dipped into a cinematic vision of dusty western climes which borrowed from pop psychedelia and spaghetti westerns, the most obvious example being the delicate balance between the brooding twangy guitars and the delicate interludes which constitute ‘The False Husband‘, a magnificent song which is topped with chiming church bells, tolling surely in a tribute to Morricone.
While most of the album’s songs are penned by Campbell and the crux of the recording took place in her native Scotland, It’s Lanegan who towers over the disc. He’s quite magnificent on the closing number ‘The Circus Is Leaving Town’, a solo vocal effort which doesn’t feature Campbell and it’s his gravel voice which opens the album with a thump on the malevolent ‘Deus Est Ibi’, another song surely indebted to Hazlewood, with Campbell singing the ethereal counterpoint to Lanegan’s gravity. On their cover of Hank Williams’ ‘Ramblin’ Man’, given here a fine junkyard blues delivery, it’s Lanegan who is at the guts of the song. However, Campbell more than holds her own as when she breathily delivers ‘Saturday’s Gone’ over a fine cowboy like clip clop backing while ‘Black Mountain’ finds her delving into child ballad themes and features her cello playing to great effect.
“Ballad Of The Broken Seas” was the first of three albums the pair recorded and obviously there won’t be a fourth. Re-released in the wake of Campbell’s latest solo album, this reissue (available on vinyl and CD) is straightforward with no bells or whistles attached. As such, there’s nothing here to tempt anyone who has the original album but if you haven’t got a copy, then here’s your chance to grab what is, in essence, a grand collection of songs steeped in a classic americana tradition.
