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Rating: * * * *
You can just imagine them standing up at the microphone, with a scrunched-up face, and letting rip. They produce the kind of unique, gravelly baritone that makes you want to stick them in a preserving jar and put them in a museum.
On Sunday At Devil Dirt the former Screaming Trees frontman provides lead vocals for 12 songs written by Isobel Campbell, a Scottish lass formerly of oddball indie pop outfit Belle and Sebastian.
It's the pair's second album following 2006's beautiful Ballad of the Broken Seas, which was nominated for Britian's prestigious Mercury Prize, and they come up with a mix of slinky ballads, swooning country-tinged porch songs, and creepy ditties about love, loss, salvation and journeying.
The instantly likeable songs are ones like the sweet and meandering country blues of The Flame That Burns and the slightly naughty Come On Over (Turn Me On) has enough saucy and dramatic strings to make it a potential Bond theme.
However, while the slower, brooding tracks take longer to get used to they are the ones that give the album its intrigue.
On opener Seafaring Song a faint accordian wheezes throughout as Lanegan's soothing yet grizzly whisper is backed by Campbell's barely audible coo; the eerie Back Burner slithers along with a loose, twanging guitar and smoky keys; and on Shotgun Blues Campbell sounds like Marilyn Monroe vamping it up with a rough and ready bluesman.
Lanegan has been a busy lad lately, having just released an excellent album as one half of the Gutter Twins with former Afghan Whig Greg Dulli, and this boy girl pairing is just as good.
They may come from different backgrounds (she's a celloist from a band labelled baroque pop and he's a pure blooded rocker) and have contrasting voices but the combination is magical.
Scott Kara
