May 06 2008 11:23 am,
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
'Sunday at Devil Dirt'
(Cooperative/V2)
The Campbell-Lanegan collaboration is more a show of theatrical farce than anything else. Straight off from the title, ‘Sunday At Devil Dirt’ is full of clichés of dusty
Their debut was playful and engaging in its sweet-sour, innocence-experience shading, and here is much of the same — only lonelier and more serious. Again, Campbell pens some truly great songs and Lanegan sings them as only he can; there's more him and less of her than before — a shame maybe, but her background wallowing fixes focus on the darker erotic delicacy that's their collaborative charm. An album of uneasy isolation, byway of minimal, nuanced country-western brilliance.
