Campbell & Lanegan. The evil Sinatra/Hazlewood, Birkin/Gainsbourg or is it Sonny and Cher. Re-issued gem for Lanegan’s 60th.

Re-release Date: 22nd November 2024

Label: Cooking Vinyl

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

an out of the ordinary record

November 25th was Mark Lanegan’s birthday, and, had he lived, he would have turned 60 a day or three after the release of this welcome reissue. A decidedly out of the ordinary record, it is one well worth your acquaintance. As anyone familiar with Lanegan’s 2020 memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep, for Campbell, the self-effacing cellist from Belle & Sebastian, to pair up with the then often unreliable gravel voiced singer was quite a bold move, if inspired. Preceded by an EP, two years before, the duo made a total of 3 full length records before going their separate ways. Whether Campbell will appear at the forthcoming 60th Birthday Celebrations, at the Roundhouse, 5/12/2024, remains to be seen, as a bevy of his friends and associates come together to pay musical tribute.

Ballad Of The Broken Seas was released originally on 7/3/06, largely recorded the year before. Most of the material was written by Campbell, with her sending the tapes to Lanegan, to add his contributions. Back across the ocean, Campbell then completed and produced the project, with a roster of mainly Glasgow musicians on hand, where needed. Lanegan wrote but one of the songs. It performed reasonably well in the UK and mainland Europe, attaining chart positions in the lower reaches of the top 50 of most those countries, 38 in the UK.

Intriguingly, it did best in Belgium, as did the two which followed, reaching 15 in that country, with Ireland next best, with a 21. This set the trend for Lanegan to be largely better received this side the pond, and likely contributed to his decision, in 2020, to relocate to Killarney, Western Ireland, where he died, from what was presumed to be Covid related illness, two years later.

oddly childish

The first thing that leaps out the grooves is quite what an oddly childish sounding album it is, although child-like might become the opinion on any second listen, the two words meaning something inherently different. However unlikely the venture ever may have seemed, in the first place, that now becomes dwarfed by the reality. The biggest nod is clearly to the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra collaborations of the late1960s, early 1970’s, even if the low voice/high voice comparison is essentially simplistic, if true. The major difference is around who was in charge, it being clearly Campbell, and it is fun seeing how she up-ends some of the expectations grizzled loner meets innocent ingenue usually imparts, via the words she puts in Lanegan’s mouth.

Whether Lanegan appreciated any such irony would be hard to know, so few words did he ever speak. I hope so, but I recall well a radio interview, jointly with each of them, with Campbell effusively informative and Lanegan emphatically tight-lipped, uncomfortable and annoyed when pressed to make comment, little revealed beyond “what she said” type answers, together with grunts. Which, of course, added yet more to the allure and delight of the collaboration.

unexpected for 2006

Deus Ibi Est fires the starting pistol, with Lanegan intoning the vocal in a near monotone, right down in the depths of his already bottom heavy register, over a languid acoustic strum. God is there is the meaning, and it’s maybe a warning to Satan that there are some goods songs outside his sole domain. Conjecture, of course, but with lines like “Rise up, rise up, oh demons, I shall shame you down the barrel of my gun, and one by one, I’ll name you“, it’s heady stuff. Campbell trills in for the chorus, kickdrum the only other accompaniment.

It is all rather unexpected for 2006, even for those familiar with Lanegan’s burgeoning solo discography, a desolate world apart from the stürm and drang of Screaming Trees or QOTSA. The way the pair tackle the pronunciation of “est” gives also a delicious hint of a Sons of the Pioneers type yippy-i-ay to the chorus, something I hadn’t appreciated first time around.

a hint of scarboro ‘ fair

Black Mountain invites a sawing fiddle and a hint of Scarboro’ Fair to the party, and is Campbell’s frail contralto alone. Truth or dare in song, or should I say lie, as she conjures up the image of a man, “flying into the sun“, and a dog “much blacker than night“. Both Lanegan? I get that may certainly be the expectation, if true or lie. The classic murder ballad of False Husband follows, which carries a definite debt to the template built, ten years before, by Nick Cave, thinking especially of Kylie, with whom Campbell shares a similarly delicate range. But, this is no trad. arr., being another of Campbell’s quixotic anthems, awash with spaghetti western strings, and twangier than twang guitar. And, of course, there are bells, that always a given in such constructions!

The title track is perhaps the most conventionally orthodox arrangement here, the uneasiness dialled down towards almost easy listening. His voice is as gentle as he gets, the arrangement a rich brew of piano and rhythm section, with offkilter clangs and a sinuous cello preventing it all from getting too cosy. Campbell’s backing is little more than an aural spectre, glimpsed through part closed eyes, adding to the unfolding grand guignol of Lanegan’s weary “sailboat of sin” narrative. It is a stupendous confection, with an aftertaste that isn’t sweet at all.

expanding moods

That mood expands into Revolver, as Campbell ghost whispers her threat/warning, before strings simmer about a Cohenesque melody, in which they sing together, embodiment of the living and the dead. The sole track here written by Lanegan, it inhabits the same eldritch ecosystem as Campbell’s compositions, showing a shared understanding, even from their recording studios, at opposite ends of, if not the earth, nearly that far.

Ramblin’ Man is a cover, a Hank Williams song, if interpreted through Brecht and Weill, a shuffling roustabout beat with rockbilly brushed drums and walking bass. Guitars slide and screech, with Campbell singing against and under him, a split screen vision, displaying what is either behind him or yet still to come. It is thoroughly creepy, heightened as Lanegan breaks into a jaunty whistle. But you ain’t heard nothing yet, as the full horror of Do You Wanna (Come Walk with Me) unfolds, all the more overt in the wake of Operation Yewtree and it’s aftermath. Remind yourself that Campbell is and was a grown woman at the time, and that this is actually only a song.

metaphysical imagery

Saturday’s Gone backpedals from this precipice of taste, and is a solo piece from Campbell, with vibraphone and hand percussion, breezy with all the Gallic flavour of Francoise Hardy or, better still, a young Jane Birkin, the Hot Club fiddle a perfect adjunct. The gaily bobbing melody, unsurprisingly, is not matched by the metaphysical imagery in the lyric. It is followed by the brief instrumental of It’s Hard to Kill A Bad Thing, retaining the hand percussion, with a bluesy acoustic guitar reminiscent of Peter Green’s Man Of The World, before a string section goes all Sergio Leone. I guess it is as much palate cleanser as anything else, and not unwelcome.

Honey Child What Can I Do is now certainly a change in style, the singers now seeming far more contrite, in a song that could have suited Sonny and Cher, not least the clumsy drums and mirrored strings and twang. It feels to have slipped in from a separate session, to the extent that, in a parallel universe and twenty years before, it could have graced a family friendly pop chart. Dusty Wreath, which follows, seems also to have little in common, either with the song before it or, indeed, anything much earlier on the disc.

a calming departure

There is a sense similar to the end of a slasher film, the old trick where you are lulled into a happy ending: you know, the end of Carrie, that sort of thing. It is actually quite lovely. But what follows, to close proceedings, is too. Led by pipe organ, The Circus Is Leaving Town is a benign Waitsian epilogue, early Waits, clearly, before he got overly scary himself. Regardless of that, it also seems a refugee from a quieter, and more reflective, set of circumstances than the main body of this album, It offers possibly Lanegan’s best vocal here, a record where every loop and facet of his larynx has been given a turn. It lets you leave, calmer and more reassured than had it all ended three tracks sooner.

But let’s go tumbling back into nightmare…………

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