Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt

The first Campbell and Lanegan record earned a 2006 Mercury Prize shortlist nod and got the pair labeled a modern-day Nancy and Lee. Sunday At Devil Dirt, released in May 2008 on V2, is the album that proved the pairing was no novelty. This time Lanegan flew to Glasgow to cut his vocals rather than mailing them in from across the Atlantic, and you can hear the difference in how closely the two voices sit together.

Campbell wrote, produced and arranged the whole thing, handing Lanegan the lead vocal duties and building the arrangements around that voice like a frame around a photograph. Twelve songs of dust-bitten ballads and troubled wandering, cut between studios in the Catskills and Campbell's native Glasgow, with a few co-writes alongside Jim McCulloch. "Seafaring Song," "The Raven," "Salvation" and "Who Built the Road" work the same rich seam of alt-country, folk and blues as the debut, but the record pushes further into dusty southern gothic, and a sultry, jazzy feel runs through several tracks. Campbell's whisper against Lanegan's barroom rasp still lands like silk on cracked leather.

The middle chapter of the celebrated trilogy the two made together, bookended by Ballad of the Broken Seas and 2010's Hawk, and for many listeners the sweetest spot of the three. Lanegan's death in 2022 has only made these records feel more essential.

This long-awaited vinyl reissue brings the full 46-minute album back to the format it was always meant for. Long out of print and hard to find, so grab it while it's here.