Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan "Ballad of the Broken Seas" (V2)
By Ben Taylor
Tuesday. Mar 21, 1:44 AM
Understated and underwhelming from a seemingly mismatched pair of alt-rock second-stringers.

It should be said up front that fans of Mark Lanegan’s previous bands, Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age, should approach this album with an open mind. There’s a reason that former Belle & Sebastian cellist/vocalist Isobel Campbell’s name appears first and it’s her pretty visage in clear focus on the cover, while Lanegan mopes in the background. These ethereal folk blues ballads will probably turn off twee fans of Campbell’s old band as well, but they actually manage to find some middle ground that works.

Most folks probably aren’t familiar with Lanegan’s solo career, begun way back before grunge was a bonafide youth-oriented marketing craze. He’d planned an EP of blues covers with Kurt Cobain and Kris Novoselic before Nirvana’s Nevermind took off. That concept didn’t pan out, and Kurt hijacked their version of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”, scaring the bejeesus out of anyone who saw his harrowing version on MTV’s Unplugged not long before his death. Since then, Lanegan has produced several albums worth of stark booze-addled acoustic balladry that’s earned him some well-deserved comparisons to Johnny Cash and Nick Cave. He’s dark, he’s mysterious, he’s got a husky baritone voice and an acoustic guitar, it’s easy to connect the dots.

So how does he sound matched up with a clean-cut Euro-waif like Campbell? The songs are melodic and graceful, shuffling along on train-chug brushed snare drums with delicate string embellishments and pleasantly reverbed guitar licks, but they never sound like they’re actually in the same room together. Granted, Campbell produced the record and Lanegan added his vocals later, but this just shows that no matter how far recording technology progresses, you still need a solid vibe to build everything on.

Ballad of the Broken Seas has a nice dark and chilled-out vibe, with plenty of murky spaghetti western atmosphere, but it’s a little lacking in real emotion. Imagine if Hallmark hired Tom Waits to write a TV jingle, but replaced him with someone a little less weird at the last minute. Or if Nick Drake wasn’t so damned depressed. Campbell’s coos complement Lanegan’s deep croon, and it sounds pretty good while you’re listening to it, but it’s not necessarily going to stick in your head after the disc ends. Their voices evoke the classic Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood duets, but there isn’t enough substance to give any lasting impression other than “yeah, that album playing in the background at the coffee shop last night was pretty alright.”
www.isobelcampbell.com
www.marklanegan.com
www.v2music.com

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Ben Taylor

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