Isobel Campbell | ||
| Allmusic Biography : After vaulting to fame as a founding member of the beloved indie pop collective Belle & Sebastian, Isobel Campbell enjoyed success as a solo artist, recording lush and elegiac chamber pop under her given name, under the moniker the Gentle Waves, and with longstanding duet partner Mark Lanegan. Born April 27, 1976, in Glasgow, Scotland, Campbell studied classical cello as an adolescent. At the age of 19, she met aspiring singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch at a New Years party, and although their romance proved brief, she nevertheless agreed to participate in a planned recording session sponsored by Stow Colleges Music Business Administration curriculum. Dubbed Belle & Sebastian in honor of a beloved childrens book and attendant animated series, the group issued just 1,000 copies of its 1996 debut LP, Tigermilk. Its shimmering, literate folk-pop immediately earned a worldwide cult following that further expanded with the release of If Youre Feeling Sinister later that same year. On 1998s The Boy with the Arab Strap, Campbell delivered her first lead vocal, "Is It Wicked Not to Care?" With her ethereal voice and striking, Jean Seberg-inspired looks, it was inevitable that she earned much attention from fans and media alike, and in the spring of 1999 she released her first full-length solo project, the Gentle Waves The Green Fields of Foreverland.... A second and final Gentle Waves release, Swansong for You, followed a year later, but Campbell nevertheless remained a full-time member of Belle & Sebastian through mid-2002, co-writing the Top 20 U.K. hit "Legal Man" before finally exiting just prior to the release of Ghost of Yesterday, a collection of Billie Holiday covers recorded in collaboration with jazz musician Bill Wells. After 2003s Amorino, Campbell kept a low profile for several years, finally resurfacing in the spring of 2006 with Ballad of the Broken Seas, a collection of duets with former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. The two again collaborated on 2008s Sunday at Devil Dirt and 2010s Hawk. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 8 Title: Ghost of Yesterday Released: 2002 Tracks: 7 Duration: 19:01 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 All Alone (04:19) 2 Ghost of Yesterday (02:19) 3 Who Needs You? (03:46) 4 Please Dont Do It in Here (02:26) 5 Preacher Boy (01:54) 6 Tell Me More and More (And Then Some) (01:23) 7 Somebodys on My Mind (02:50) |
 | Album: 2 of 8 Title: Amorino Released: 2003-10-07 Tracks: 13 Duration: 44:07 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Amorino (03:45) 2 The Breeze Whispered Your Name (04:45) 3 Monologue for an Old True Love (03:41) 4 October’s Sky (02:32) 5 The Cat’s Pyjamas (02:23) 6 Why Does My Head Hurt So? (02:15) 7 Johnny Come Home (03:41) 8 Poor Butterfly (03:00) 9 Love for Tomorrow (02:48) 10 There Is No Greater Gold (04:08) 11 This Land Flows With Milk (04:19) 12 Song for Baby (03:49) 13 Time Is Just the Same (02:55) |
| Amorino : Allmusic album Review : Former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbells first album under her own name is very similar to the two albums she recorded as the Gentle Waves. The same autumnal melancholy pervades the songs, the same delicate beauty exists in the arrangements, the same tender emotions are on display lyrically, and Campbells voice is still a fragile wisp barely able to stay afloat above the sad sawing of the strings. What has changed is the scale of the record: it is really quite grand, with a seeming cast of thousands helping to make the record achingly lush and romantic. The entire disc is flooded with cinematic strings, giving it the feel of a pastoral epic, much like Nick Drake if he were happy or Donovan if he were less happy. Very British and very good. The arrangements are always inventive and dramatic, and it sounds like she also has been listening to some jazz records, because many of the songs have a swinging continental jazz feeling with lots of groovy piano work and bubbling standup bass. Tracks like "Song for Baby" and "Octobers Sky" are for all intents and purposes straight-up chamber jazz. Good and inventive chamber jazz, even. Campbell also throws in a few surprises, like the wacky Dixieland of "The Cats Pyjamas" and the Getz/Gilberto-sampling "The Breeze Whispered Your Name." At its best, on songs like "Monologue for an Old True Love" or the Nancy & Lee-styled orchestral country duet with Eugene Kelly, listening to Amorino provides nearly as many musical thrills as listening to a good B&S record. It definitely makes her decision to leave Belle & Sebastian less painful, as now the Belle & Sebastian-loving throng has something to play when it has worn out Dear Catastrophe Waitress. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 8 Title: Ballad of the Broken Seas Released: 2006-01-30 Tracks: 12 Duration: 42:49 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Deus Ibi Est (02:51) 2 Black Mountain (03:10) 3 The False Husband (03:53) 4 Ballad of the Broken Seas (02:42) 5 Revolver (02:40) 6 Ramblin Man (03:29) 7 (Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me? (03:27) 8 Saturdays Gone (04:37) 9 Its Hard to Kill a Bad Thing (02:53) 10 Honey Child What Can I Do? (03:44) 11 Dusty Wreath (03:44) 12 The Circus Is Leaving Town (05:35) |
| Ballad of the Broken Seas : Allmusic album Review : Its tempting to say something facile like "beauty meets the beast" in writing about this collaboration between former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, best known for his work with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age. After all, Campbells voice is all sweet angelic whisper while Lanegans whisky-and-nicotine rasp sounds like the product of ten thousand nights in a barroom, but somehow these sweet and sour elements come together with striking and impressive results on Ballad of the Broken Seas. It helps that musically these two are not far away from the same page; the ghostly blues-based structures of Lanegans Whiskey for the Holy Ghost and The Winding Sheet may be starker than Campbells stuff with Belle & Sebastian or her solo set Amorino, but they both appear to revel in the sort of glorious sadness that draws beauty from melancholy, and they find a dark and lovely common ground on this set of songs. Campbell produced the album and wrote the bulk of the material (though Lanegan wrote one song, the moody and satisfying "Revolver"), and while its no great surprise that she comes up with superb material for herself, she also knows what to make of Lanegans expressive rasp ("The Circus Is Leaving Town" is as good a performance as hes ever recorded), and their numbers together (especially "The False Husband" and the cover of Hank Williams "Ramblin Man") recall what one hoped Nick Cave and Kylie Minogues duets on Murder Ballads would sound like. Ballad of the Broken Seas is a superbly crafted bit of late-night introspection that brings out the best in both Lanegan and Campbell and adds new and unexpected facets to their impressive repertoires. | ||
 | Album: 4 of 8 Title: O Love Is Teasin Released: 2006-05 Tracks: 7 Duration: 25:46 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 O Love Is Teasin (01:58) 2 Nottamun Town (03:39) 3 Yearning (04:14) 4 Lady of Snakes (02:17) 5 Barbara Ellen (07:58) 6 Black Is the Colour (02:23) 7 Dabbling in the Dew (03:17) |
 | Album: 5 of 8 Title: Milkwhite Sheets Released: 2006-10-23 Tracks: 13 Duration: 45:21 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 O Love Is Teasin (01:56) 2 Willows Song (04:22) 3 Yearning (04:18) 4 James (03:55) 5 Hori Horo (02:20) 6 Reynardine (02:53) 7 Milkwhite Sheets (01:20) 8 Cachel Wood (02:37) 9 Beggar, Wiseman, or Thief (03:13) 10 Loving Hannah (03:18) 11 Are You Going to Leave Me? (04:31) 12 Over the Wheat and the Barley (02:34) 13 Thursdays Child (08:04) |
 | Album: 6 of 8 Title: Sunday at Devil Dirt Released: 2008-05-12 Tracks: 17 Duration: 1:08:38 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Seafaring Song (03:30) 2 The Raven (04:57) 3 Salvation (03:17) 4 Who Built the Road (02:53) 5 Come on Over (Turn Me On) (04:39) 6 Back Burner (06:34) 7 The Flame That Burns (03:36) 8 Shotgun Blues (03:50) 9 Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart (02:33) 10 Something to Believe (03:31) 11 Trouble (04:47) 12 Sally, Dont You Cry (04:43) 13 Fight Fire With Fire (04:33) 14 Asleep on a Sixpence (04:13) 15 Violin Tango (01:37) 16 Rambling Rose, Clinging Vine (04:37) 17 Hang On (04:44) |
| Sunday at Devil Dirt : Allmusic album Review : The second collaboration between Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, 2008s Sunday at Devil Dirt, follows roughly the same template as the first, 2006s Ballad of the Broken Seas. The songs hit all the same signposts with stops at the lowdown country blues, and melancholy orchestral pop à la Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, restrained British folk, and dramatic Bad Seeds-lite balladry. Once again, Campbell reverses the traditional pop formula of a male Svengali, writing, producing, and molding his female talent by writing all the songs and doing all the production and arranging herself, leaving Lanegan in the diva role. In fact, Devil Dirt is almost a carbon copy of Broken Seas in every way (except for the decidedly cheap looking album art). This similarity could be problematic and make the album less impressive or desirable; fortunately, the formula is strong and worth revisiting. Campbells arranging skills have grown some too, though they were already strong, and the production is clean and dramatic. In spots, it verges on too clean (a little more grit would have made some of the songs more powerful, a little less NPR, and a little more dangerous) but never to the point of dulling the songs impact. The real treat of the record is hearing Lanegans gruff baritone mesh queasily with Campbells paper-thin vocals, their duets on "Who Built the Road?" and "Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart" to name two are quite entertaining and charming. Lanegans solo spots are treated with his trademark broken down melancholy growl; hes remarkably steady and reliable throughout (this album and his career) and gives the album a rocksteady foundation of melancholy soul. Campbells vocal feature is a bit of a wobbler, though, as hearing her purr her way through a 12-bar blues is territory better left to Holly Golightly, she just sounds kittenish instead of sultry here. Its really the only stumble on the album though and more proof that a Svengali is better off staying in the background, especially if the world of sound he creates is as captivating as what Campbell creates on Sunday at Devil Dirt. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 8 Title: Keep Me in Mind Sweetheart Released: 2008-11-17 Tracks: 6 Duration: 22:17 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart (02:33) 2 Fight Fire With Fire (04:33) 3 Asleep on a Sixpence (04:13) 4 Violin Tango (01:37) 5 Rambling Rose, Clinging Vine (04:37) 6 Hang On (04:44) |
 | Album: 8 of 8 Title: Hawk Released: 2010-08-16 Tracks: 13 Duration: 47:52 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 We Die and See Beauty Reign (02:56) 2 You Won’t Let Me Down Again (03:30) 3 Snake Song (02:48) 4 Come Undone (05:44) 5 No Place to Fall (03:16) 6 Get Behind Me (05:09) 7 Time of the Season (04:28) 8 Hawk (02:28) 9 Sunrise (02:31) 10 To Hell & Back Again (04:45) 11 Cool Water (03:38) 12 Eyes of Green (01:51) 13 Lately (04:48) |
| Hawk : Allmusic album Review : Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan seemed like an unlikely musical couple when they first began collaborating in 2006 -- she of the breathy whisper, he of the deep, bluesy rasp. But their intriguing blend of bitter and sweet has turned into viable ongoing partnership, and on their third album together, Hawk, Campbell and Lanegan continue to merge their distinct but complimentary styles while adding a few new edges to their approach. While Lanegan didnt write any material for this album, someone got the fine idea of persuading him to dip into the Townes Van Zandt songbook; his voice was tailor made for the grim undercurrents of "Snake Song." "Come Undone," meanwhile, plays out over a taut R&B-flavored backing track with strings and a relentless single-note piano mirroring the tension of the lyrics, while "You Wont Let Me Down Again" winds out its dark, atmospheric melody with a dose of slashing guitar courtesy of James Iha. "Get Behind Me" is a rollicking dose of honky tonk fire, and "Lately" closes out the set with some passionate country gospel pleading. But the biggest surprise is the title track, a righteous blast of sax-driven blues that stomps and swaggers to hard that theres no room for vocals, and if it seems like an odd choice for an album from a pair of singers, its wild and tough enough that no one is likely to mind. Much of the rest of the album follows the template of Campbell and Lanegans first two albums, but if its heavy on echoing atmospherics and open spaces, theres no arguing that Campbell (as producer and primary songwriter) knows how to make this stuff work, and her duets with Lanegan sound only more confident and intuitive with time. Ballad of the Broken Seas was a surprise because two seemingly mismatched artists proved to be a splendid collaboration; four years later, Hawk isnt as startling, but its encouraging to know that the magic between Campbell and Lanegan not only hasnt worn off, its manifesting itself in new and compelling ways. | ||