Making good on her promise to release two albums this year, ex-Belle and Sebastian vocalist and cellist Isobel Campbell presents us with the second, Milk White Sheets. (The first, Ballad of the Broken Seas, was a collaboration with ex-Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan.)
While Ballad of the Broken Seas took a detour down the desolate highway of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s black country duets, Milk White Sheets is an exploration of traditional and original folk ballads. Campbell’s delicate, whispering soprano beckons the listener into a melancholy world of fickle lovers, husbands lost at sea and the fading bloom of romance.
The addition of instruments, like the recorder, Spanish guitar and Campbell’s brooding cello, serve to enhance the album’s isolated, glacial beauty, effectively placing the listener into an ancient Scottish folk tale. Enchanting.
