It's tempting to say something facile like "beauty meets the beast" in writing about this collaboration between former
Belle & Sebastian member
Isobel Campbell and
Mark Lanegan, best known for his work with
Screaming Trees and
Queens of the Stone Age. After all,
Campbell's voice is all sweet angelic whisper while
Lanegan's whisky-and-nicotine rasp sounds like the product of ten thousand nights in a barroom, but somehow these sweet and sour elements come together with striking and impressive results on Ballad of the Broken Seas. It helps that musically these two are not far away from the same page; the ghostly blues-based structures of
Lanegan's
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost and
The Winding Sheet may be starker than
Campbell's stuff with
Belle & Sebastian or her solo set
Amorino, but they both appear to revel in the sort of glorious sadness that draws beauty from melancholy, and they find a dark and lovely common ground on this set of songs.
Campbell produced the album and wrote the bulk of the material (though
Lanegan wrote one song, the moody and satisfying "Revolver"), and while it's no great surprise that she comes up with superb material for herself, she also knows what to make of
Lanegan's expressive rasp ("The Circus Is Leaving Town" is as good a performance as he's ever recorded), and their numbers together (especially "The False Husband" and the cover of
Hank Williams' "Ramblin' Man") recall what one hoped
Nick Cave and
Kylie Minogue's duets on
Murder Ballads would sound like. Ballad of the Broken Seas is a superbly crafted bit of late-night introspection that brings out the best in both
Lanegan and
Campbell and adds new and unexpected facets to their impressive repertoires. ~ Mark Deming