More on: Isobel Campbell

Label: V2
Release Date: 28/04/08
Rating:

The excellent chamber folk of 'Ballad Of The Broken Seas', where whiskey and nicotine soused yank meets fey Scottish beautiful temptress, becomes darker and lusher still in 'Who Built The Road', first single from Lanegan and Campbell's follow-up album 'Sunday At Devil Dirt'.

"Who built the road?" is the question which lies at the song's heart, repeated at the start of each verse to subtly create a mood of restlessness and longing until the final verse answers it: "We built the road". The listener is finally made aware that the question is less a philosophical dilemma of chance vs determinism, and more a psychological 'war' between lovers. Who - him or her - should take the blame for his "self esteem, twisted and crunched" and her "trembling visions that terrify"?

The lovers allude to being on the same 'chain gang,' recalling Johnny Cash and evoking a barren pre-1955 American or Australian landscape with spades clattering and dust scattering as manicled convicts build roads for the Western world under a scorching yellow sky. Wild west bells gong every strong beat of the compound waltz time, drums clatter not pummel, strings conjure pre-rock'n'roll ballroom romanticism, an ethereal beauty within sadness. While the ex-lovers seem to declare a truce and share the blame for their failed relationship, Lanegan's final couplet immediately before hints otherwise. Lyrically, then, 'Who Built The Road' is very much a modern day male-female collaboration, psychologically darker than any Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra record, and much more a battle of the sexes than Gainsbrough-Birkin/Bardot's duets, Lanegan and Campbell like two spent svengalis reluctantly relinquishing their hypnotic pendants.

Jon Parry

Isobel Campbell Official Site