Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Sunday at Devil Dirt

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Sunday at Devil Dirt

Sunday at Devil Dirt – Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

By Chris Peken

All hail the resurrection of the duo – Nancy and Lee (Sinatra and Hazelwood), Sonny and Cher, Serge and Jane (Gainsbourg and Birkin). While Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s first album together – Ballad of the Broken Seas – was a beautiful but flawed effort of two solo artists coming together, Sunday at Devil Dirt is a fully-formed duo effort; with the pair blending, complementing and combining in whatever form is dictated by the song. On the whole that means Campbell – who wrote all bar one of the twelve songs and produced the album – taking a back seat to the husky, brooding baritone of Lanegan. Weary and worn, but tender and surprisingly vulnerable, Lanegan’s voice works its way through shanties, folk, blues, waltzes and torch songs alike. Nowhere does he get closer to the listener than in The Raven, sounding like a dusty Leonard Cohen singing a Enio Morricone lament. When Campbell does inject her voice to the fore she often tracks with Lanegan, her honey-sweet and pure tones providing a yin to Lanegan’s deep testosterone yang. Thus they become two sides of one voice on songs like Come On Over (Turn Me On), a tune that builds to the albums most frenetic moment, a blues-soaked, string-led crescendo. Sweet, dirty, tender and dark in equally delicious portions.

**** 1/2

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