Song, by Toad

First things first – I didn’t realise that this album was entirely about sex, but after seeing these two in the flesh, it can’t be about anything else. Not that they were in any way sexual with each other, with us, or with anyone else. In fact they barely betrayed the slightest flicker of emotion between them all night. Except once. After the first song a wee Scottish lass piped up with “Mark Lanegan I love you” at which he gave an amused smirk and cast her a brief glance which can only be described as pitying.

No, the sex was entirely in the two of them as people. Isobel Campbell is an utter fox. Listening to her frail, plaintive voice you’d imagine someone closely approximating a woodland fairy to look at. What you get is a blond cutie in a short, slinky black mini-dress and knee high boots and the sort of look on her face that implies she’d strump you ’til your dentures rattled. With that voice! How?

Lanegan, on the other hand, evinced a sort of glowering, if-you-dare smoulder all night. To quote Beth from Lonesome Music:

“he is a big, surly, scary bugger and make no mistake about it. He refused point blank to talk to the audience and seemed to communicate with Isobel by eyebrow raise alone. The other band members gave him a wide berth. But he sure can sing.”

And that’s what it comes down to: without ever seeming to try he completely dominated the stage whenever he opened his mouth. And, come to think of it, whenever you so much as thought he might. His deep, terrifying growl comes from such a dark, ruined place you get the impression running off with him would be akin to allowing the devil himself to subsume your very soul. Fuck, I’m about as heterosexual as it gets and I bloody fancy him.

As a gig this was no better than good. Basically they ploughed through most of the tracks from Ballad of the Broken Seas, threw in a few from Lanegan’s solo stuff and some from Campbell’s Amorino (not from Milk White Sheets I notice – maybe she’s as lukewarm on that one as I am – or maybe Mark forbade it). The songs were all performed well, but I don’t feel I’ve learned too much more about them in a musical sense for seeing them live. And they used pre-recorded strings on a couple of tracks which gets right on my tits. If you can’t bring a string section, just bloody do without – that’s the whole bloody point of a live performance. It’s not like Isobel didn’t whip out her cello on occasion anyway.

So there were a few minor gripes, but it was a good gig on the whole. Really the whole point of it for me was hearing Mark Lanegan sing. Hearing his voice grip the entire audience by the throat on the closer, Wedding Dress, was worth it and more, all by itself.

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Saturday’s Gone
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Ballad of the Broken Seas
Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress