V2 Int'l
2008
Sunday At Devil Drive
About This Album
The second collaboration between Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, 2008's Sunday at Devil Dirt, follows roughly the same template as the first, 2006's 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. Campbell's 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.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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