Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt
(V2/Co-operative)
http://www.isobellcampbell.com

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s first album together was met with excitement. What? That one from Belle and Sebastian and that one from Queens of the Stone Age - so something that sounds like Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood? Aces! And so with the release of Sunday At Devil Dirt it’s really a case of more of the same. Er – yay?

What was at first a loving homage now sounds more of a cloying pastiche. There are points on this album that Lanegan’s voice is so low my speakers have trouble making him out and Isobel Campbell obviously wishes she was Nancy Sinatra and not in a good way - more like the bleary eyed divorcee at the karaoke who’s thinking ‘look at me, I am Sandra Dee.’ Tracks like Come On Over (Turn Me On) are beyond parody sounding like one of those sultry string soaked songs from the sixties that end up on adverts for chocolate.

The album is more effective when it is stripped right down and its influences are more straightforward and less kitsch. Lanegan’s Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart and Something To Believe are sweet nods to Hank Williams. Then again, some of the other country-tinged tracks are less successful. In Shotgun Blues for example, no amount of bottle neck and record scratch can make Isobel Campbell sound sultry, particularly when she seems to be singing about her Daddy!

Of course, ‘more of the same’ will probably appeal to the many who enjoyed the first record. I suppose it depends on whether you can bear it or not. For my money, this project should have been like the blob in Ghostbusters: a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm or a Class Five Full Roaming Vapour. Still, it sounds like they had fun making it.

Tom Sutton