Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age both can count themselves as some of the luckiest bunch of bastards of Gods green earth to have worked with the enigma of a bluesman that is Mark Lanegan...
However, as good as the output was from those two bands, neither can touch the sublime beauty and brilliance of his two recorded collaborations with the erstwhile beauty Isobel Campbell ex-Belle and Sebastien)...
2004's Time Is Just the Same.
2006's Ballad Of The Broken Seas.
2007's Sunday at Devil Dirt
and now - this - 2010's Hawk.
It really is a stunning piece of work, Isobel Campbell's vocals are like a haunting siren, beckoning you to the rocks like a sailor in a galleon full of Spanish gold, much as they were in B&S... Whilst Mark Lanegan is surely the natural heir apparent to the gruff voiced eccentricity of Tom Waits, and a shoe in to play the man should a film ever be made...
The music they create together is more eclectic, more meandering and explorative than anything they would do solo, and the two voices compliment each other with spiralling, twisting, beautiful emotive fashes of genius, that the songs are lifted from one level to the stratosphere...
Soaring, beautiful and unattainably perfect...
Some people, mainly staunch Trees fans, or the sunday Stone Age fans those who love the band but are ignorant to the wide and varied projects the members have in their spare times - (desert sessions, Arctic Monkey production, Roots of Kyuss) - will no doubt be up in arms at the lack of bite and flowing, emotionally challneging, musicality of the album - but they will be the ones missing the point... And Belle And Sebastien's fans will wonder what the hell someone like Campbell is doing hanging with a brutish blues troubadour like Lanagean...
But, no matter...
Like they say - if a soul mate is the counterpoint and equal of yourself in another person, Lanegan and Campbell have most definitely found each otehrs soul mate... the fact that their souls come out with music like this is both a miracle and a blessing for us, we humble music fans, these are touches of memories, hints of the energy between these two astounding artists, glimpses into their love and respect for each other... The fact we are allowed to share in this at all is a wonder in and of itself...
Be blessed, Beause it is near-on perfect, and a truly wonderful album to behold.
Stunning...
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