ISOBEL CAMPBELL AND MARK LANEGAN
Sunday at Devil Dirt
(Fontana International)
By Todd Lavoie
In this week’s new pop canon spread, I got a chance to hail hosannas upon the late great Lee Hazlewood, whose presence has been quite deeply felt in some of the finest music of 2008. Perhaps the stamp of influence was most deeply inked, however, with Sunday at Devil Dirt, the second collaboration between wispy-piped ingénue Isobel Campbell and croak-baritoned brooder Mark Lanegan.
Here, sad-eyed orchestral pop meets dusty country blues, frequently with dreamlike results – much like Hazlewood’s signature showdowns with duet-partner Nancy Sinatra. Pitching Lanegan’s growls and grumbles against Campbell’s decidedly sweeter murmurs makes for a fascinating update of the Lee ‘n’ Nancy blueprint, but there’s a twist.
Whereas Hazlewood played the Svengali to Sinatra – writing the songs and arrangements and often taking the second seat, vocally speaking, to his partner – here the roles are switched, with Campbell at the helm musically but sticking largely to the second mic in deference to Lanegan’s bellowing lead. Having written almost the entirety of the disc, as well as handling all arrangement and production duties, Campbell has worked some spine-tingling trickery from her place in the shadows: Lanegan gets the bigger boom in the mix, yes, but behind the whisper-thin sighs and coos, it is Campbell who is in control.