The Isobel Campbell Gentle Waves Conundrum

You can't keep your mitts off the B&S threads though, can you Ned?

I thought IC-dislike was fairly evenly split along gender lines. What I've heard of her material with Bill Wells has been unexpectedly great (and not remotely like anything she could've done within the confines of B&S or TGW), and the new record seems like a stack of genre pastiches, but pretty well done. There's always that voice, of course. That's the clincher for most of either persuasion.

I admit there's a certain 'poke with stick' quality about them.

I haven't seen/heard of the new GW stuff, though.

In a good way, obv.

Hahahaha - esp. that line "I hope you don't think I'm a freak" in Fast Boyfriends.

Not that any of this has much to do with poor dear Isobel, of course. Sorry!

Not heard the new album, although a fair few people have said unprecedentedly nice things about it, so perhaps I'll get around to hearing it one day.

Anyone at the B&S shows in the Maryhill Community Centre when she was too shy (aye right) to sing The Gate and went on about how she would cock it up until the whole audience were forced into cooing about how great she would be? That was the beginning of my Isobel-hatred.

Oh, and since Lady I has left, I keep finding new members of the band to hate. My latest is Stevie, the fucking potato-headed twatface.

I do love the band, though, I really do... but sometimes many of my favourite bands annoy me to the point of hysteria with the things they do. is this just me?

YMG's Colossal Youth?

Oh Christ, out-indied again,

going to hide now

kate

Amelia = ace.

Stevie = cute.

I just mentioned Young Marble Giants, as Alison Statton pioneered that singing style (in 1979!). I love the album - nothing twee about it, just eerie, without being sinister. There's a site here, if you're interested.

Sarah Martin sings that one, so maybe it is one of hers.

Aahhh, so the double tracked songs are not Isobel. Waiting... is (imo) the best track on that album.. It reminds me of The G!st somehow...

yeah, Sarah Martin wrote that one. her first one, that.

RE the image: the girlishness has become sort of strangely housewifey. The dresses, clasped hands, slightly quiet spokeness of her makes her seem like someone you know's sweet scottish mother. Strange.

Lanegan wrote "Revolver," Isobel wrote everything else except the "Ramblin Man" cover and "It's Hard To Kill A Bad Thing." You could compare the album to Nancy/Lee or Serge/Jane but Isobel has said she felt more like the Lee/Serge figure on this album, and wrote the songs with Lanegan in mind.

New collab album with Lanegan out last Monday; again, very good. I've been back-to-backing it with the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss thing. They're unsurprisingly similar. Lanegan reminds me of someone very unusual at times... I nailed it yesterday morning but can't remember who now. As he gets older he sounds more and more like this person. Not Tom Waits. Great tune on the new one called "Come On Over (Turn Me On)" and another called "Back Burner", that pair-up in the middle of the record. Credits on the sleeve basically have it as an Isobel Campbell solo album on which Lanegan sings. Interestingly, Amazon.co.uk lists it as a Campbell solo album, despite Lanegan's name being on the cover too. She's also looking... not at all like a Scottish housewife on the cover. Like this a lot off three or four listens.

This thread's lack of new answers makes me sad.

Personally, I detest her for persisting to wear pinafores and hairslides despite being at least forty years old

Real talk from back in the day.

She's three years older than me, which means she would have been... 25... at the height of the pinafore wearing.

Never let the facts get in the way of a great zing.

Damn right.

i think it was jealousy.

xpost: Mark Lanegan reminds you of Micheal Gira maybe? Not just the forced baritone, not just the weary delivery, but also the way their voices are suited to the very soft and the very loud. At least it's that way for me.

i haven't heard the new album (and actually i don't want to) but their last one together sounded ridiculous - their voices don't complement each other or work together at all, on any level. he sounds like a world-weary hardman, she sounds like a librarian or a mouse.

There's always been this indie rule that women are supposed to sing as though they're in school assembly.

perhaps the most otm thing i've ever read here.

JOHNNY CASH is who Lanegan reminds me of at times; really latter day Johnny Cash, but JC nonetheless.

I can't believe I was so rude all those years ago! And I've changed my mind. And yeah, I think it probably WAS jealousy...If I ever start thinking I want to be 21 again, I'll read that first post again and remember what a horrible pompous idiot I used to be.

Re; Johnny Cash, just found this OMM review;

19 Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Sunday at Devil Dirt (V2)
4 stars

Unlike 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas , Sunday ... probably won't make the Mercury shortlist, if only because it mines a similar terrain. A shame because, with Lanegan disproving the idea that there will never be another Johnny Cash, it is both arrestingly indecent and as unpolished as Harry Smith's folk anthologies. PM

There's always been this indie rule that women are supposed to sing as though they're in school assembly.

This was true before Indie, see '60s folk revival, singer-songwriters. Men are supposed to sound gruff and the women angelic (ie virginal, like Baez).

Sunday at Devil Dirt is great, espcially "Salvation."

Lanegan is so often compared to Waits but it's a largely superficial one. Lanegan's a much (much) more tuneful singer.

Third album, August 24th.

http://i32.tinypic.com/xpu9p5.jpg

she's certainly redeemed herself with these records. although i liked her b&s work too (but not gentle waves)

!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv3vXIUumvc

album out in january

great stuff. I want to say it reminds me of Margo Guryan but I also said that on the Mitski thread so maybe I've just been listening to Margo Guryan too much? Anyway the indietracks mums and dads will love this.