Ballad Of The Broken Seas

Even as a lonely hearts ad it sounds unlikely: ethereal Scottish chanteuse seeks grunge rocker for long-distance one-night stand. Add vocalists Isobel Campbell (ex-Belle and Sebastian) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age) and you've got the most unlikely fling since Nick Cave convinced Kylie to sing a murder ballad.

Stranger still, the traditional scenario of aging male svengali bending a bright young thing to his lascivious will is turned on its head; as Lanegan surmises in Deus Ibi Est: "I march to the beat of someone else's drum." The Nancy Sinatra-Lee Hazelwood-inspired vision is Campbell's and she pulls all the kitschy strings on these duets. Having written most of the tracks, Campbell produced the album in Glasgow, with Lanegan adding vocals in LA.

Their voices are separated by more than an ocean. Feather light and swimming in echo, Campbell sounds like a teenage ghost, as sweet and innocent as she is sensual and manipulative. She doesn't so much sing words as inhabit a celestial space above the acoustic guitars, violin and cellos within the songs, while Lanegan settles in to a close approximation of American Recordings-era Johnny Cash.

On paper, it's a mixture that sounds like oil and water - until you add the sparse country rhythms and lush orchestration. The False Husband epitomises the duo's wary dance around each other. The dark, twanging chords, which sharpen under Lanegan's vocals, rush into a swirl of optimism beneath Campbell's. Where Campbell sprinkles lashings of sugar, Lanegan throws handfuls of sawdust. When their voices meet, as on the Lanegan-penned Revolver, there's an intense intimacy that defies the chasm of conflicting styles.