Sunday at Devil Dirt marks the second album that former Belle & Sebastian songbird Isobel Campbell and former Screaming Trees lead man/nomad of many projects Mark Lanegan (who just in March collaborated with Greg Dulli on the excellent Gutter Twins album) have come together to make and it improves the formula that they started on 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas.

The sound that Campbell & Lanegan combine to create is not at all unlike the odd but winning synergy Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood tapped into some 40 years ago. The only difference is that Campbell fills the roll of arranger and writer just like Hazelwood had done, while Lanegan is the singer who walks in the boots of Nancy Sinatra. Campbell coos hauntingly here and there behind Lanegan and occasionally takes the mike for a few verses, but this is mostly Lanegan's show with Campbell calling the musical shots. Lanegan sounds so much like Leonard Cohen here at times it's scary, especially on the superb "The Raven" which offers more than a tip of the hat to the Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same name - while Campbell's musical style feels heavily indebted to composer Ennio Morricone. Other tracks such as "Back Burner" enhance Lanegan's strong suits such as that tobacco stained gruff growl of his. Sunday at Devil Dirt proves that Campbell & Lanegan's unexpected pairing is more than just a one off and I can't wait to see what fruitful labors these two come up with in the future.