Isobel Campbell flips script on co-ed duets with Mark Lanegan
Co-ed duets tend to fall into a certain beauty-and-the-beast stereotype. Whether it’s Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Sonny and Cher, or Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, it’s the guys who usually are seen as the behind-the-scenes string-pullers (songwriting, producing) and the gals who smooth it all out for public consumption (voice, image). It’s a cliché, but in the world of show business, clichés die hard.
Isobel Campbell, formerly of the Scottish pop group Belle and Sebastian and now an accomplished solo artist, is fully aware of the tradition. She’s a student of duet recordings, and says she was going for a similar vibe when she recruited Mark Lanegan, the gravel-voice vocalist formerly with Seattle’s Screaming Trees, to be her partner on a track for her 2004 EP, “Time is Just the Same.” That partnership has since flourished, producing three collaborative albums – the latest, “Hawk” (Vanguard), was released a few months ago. The albums explore mystical blues, country and folk traditions with flourishes of orchestral-pop. What’s interesting is the script has been flipped, with Lanegan as the primary voice while Campbell writes, arranges, plays and produces, as well as singing a few vocals of her own.
“The women are usually ‘the voice’ and the guy is usually the svengali, but in this relationship I’m kind of like the man,” Campbell says with a laugh. “Mark and I respect each other a lot. He pushes me, challenges me, and I push back. In a sick way, I enjoy that.”
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