Isobel Campbell
Milk White Sheets
Release Date: Nov 7, 2006
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: V2
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Album Review: Milk White Sheets by Isobel Campbell
Great, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
Before she recorded Ballad of the Broken Seas with Mark Lanegan, Isobel Campbell recorded the breathtakingly beautiful Milk White Sheets. Instead of the showy country balladry she and Lanegan laid down, here Campbell delves deep into the sounds of 1960s British folk. In the liner notes she comes right out and says that Milk White Sheets was inspired by the music of female folk giants Shirley Collins, Jean Ritchie, and Anne Briggs.
Based on rating 3/5
When Isobel Campbell chose Mark Lanegan as her musical foil for this year's Mercury-nominated Ballad of the Broken Seas, she found the perfect counterpoint to her own milky, translucent tones: a voice as strong as a redwood and deep as a grave. Lanegan's weighty presence is sorely missed on this low-key homage to British folk music. Paired with nothing but an acoustic guitar, or left to shiver a cappella on Lovely Heather, Campbell's voice is frustratingly wan, and her rendition of the 19th-century ballad Reynardine invites unfavourable comparisons with Sandy Denny.