Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Hawk (Vanguard)

Mark Lanegan has one of the best male voices in “popular” music. With three fantastic solo albums under his belt and departures from both the Screaming Trees and Queens Of Stone Age, one would think his days being in a band are over. But like most great artists, Lanegan realizes that he needs to be involved with other musicians to expand his craft. And since it has been six years from his last solo album, it appears he feels most comfortable in a duo. With the Gutter Twins, he can get his rocks off. But the last twenty years of his career, he has needed another side to that coin. Which is what makes him perfectly suited for his collaboration with former Belle And Sebastian cellist Isobel Campbell.

While not a songwriter in this team-up, Lanegan gives the folk rock duo its soul and grounds the dreaminess that Campbell provides. Don’t be fooled, though. Campbell is an author on eleven of the thirteen tracks on Hawk. The only exception are two Townes Van Zandt covers. The second of which is the one real misstep on the album that I can hear. Not necessarily because of the choice of song but because Campbell chose to duet with Willy Mason, rather than Lanegan. If you have a singer the caliber of Mark Lanegan, you should utilize him. Queens Of The Stone Age would have been incredible if he was their full-time lead singer.

“You Won’t Let Me Down Again,” is a shining example of Campbell knowing how to write for Lanegan’s voice and is a great up-tempo song. “Come Undone,” is more reminiscent of their previous two records and is probably the best track where they sing in unison. For the most part, the greater successes on the album are when their voices are playing off of each other. It allows them to play a character within the song and provide each other a counterpoint with Campbell’s hushed vocals against Lanegan’s raspy baritone. The pace picks up again with “Time Of The Season,” and it is quite a tender duet.

As much as I have talked about the interplay between the two vocalists. The album’s finest moments are two tracks where each one takes center stage on their own. There is a lovely and kind of creepy moment on Hawk with Campbell front and center with guest-guitarist James Iha. It is a beautiful song that seems to be about, of all things, a mother dying in childbirth called “To Hell & Back Again,”. Lanegan, accompanied by a couple of gospel singers, closes the album with “Lately,”. This is a new context for his voice and it provides an emphatic conclusion to this sometimes uneven but sometimes fantastic record.