Track Listing

1. Keep me in Mind Sweetheart
2. Fight Fire with Fire
3. Asleep on a Sixpence
4. Violin tango
5. Rambling Rose
6. Hang On

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5691 in Music
• Released on: 2008-12-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: EP
• Dimensions: .12 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
After two full albums of juxtaposed exceptionalism from these two diametrically opposed but deeply complimentary voices, we can probably stop being shocked that they work together so well. The beauty and the beast metaphor has legs, sure, but it’s really just a thing of beauty. The tracks on this 6-track postscript EP were, title track aside, leftovers from the Sunday At Devil Dirt sessions too good to sweep away with the cigarette ends and straw. And while the quality is as continuous as you might expect, the songs have a flavour that justifies them being singled out for their own vessel. Where tracks on the full length album were performance pieces succeeding through the careful direction of light and shade and, especially with the superiority of the Ennio Morricone-esque strings, feeling like moody Spaghetti Western set pieces, the Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart EP is a less disciplined affair. Mark Lanegan does his best Leonard Cohen rumination on "Fight Fire With Fire" over slide-guitar at a bar-room pace, the twinkly glow of "Asleep On A Sixpence" with its sparse use of strings is a humble winter warmer, "Violin Tango" does exactly as it promises batting its eyelids as it goes and "Rambling Rose, Clinging Vine" and "Hang On" have a less weighted, carefree '60s pop vibe to them. So while it might lack the impressive formality of Sunday At Devil Dirt, if anything these are easier songs to love immediately, making the most of their freedom. --James Berry

Customer Reviews

Have they fallen in love now ?
These are songs which were left over from Sunday at Devil Dirt and it sounds as if the relationship between Lanegan's disreputable drifter and and Campbell's strict school marm is now well past the dangerous flings in sleazy motels of Ballad of the Broken Seas. The second album sounded and looked as if Campbell had let her hair down and moved in with the drifter, this third one has them in a world which is sweetly domestic and genuinely affectionate. Fight with Fire with Fire and Asleep on a Sixpence are the sweetest you'll ever have heard Mark Lanegan.

Sweet!
Mainly bought this on the back of a good review in the independant magazine (who do seem to pick out good stuff by the way). Also because of the Belle and Sebastian link with Isobel. I found it a slow grower which I now like a lot. Will be exploring their back catalogue.

Keep this in mind for your Christmas stockings ... (8/10)
When it was released earlier this year I resisted `Sunday At Devil Dirt', Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan's well-received, rather tongue-in-cheek take on Americana, their second full-length collaboration. It seemed to me too studied, too contrived somehow, a feeling heightened by the fact that Lanegan is something of a hired gun these days - having also supplied vocals to the highly mediocre trip-hoppery of Soulsavers, among others - adding instant gravitas with his Bourban-and-cigarettes-chiselled baritone. Written by the waifish Scottish indie darling Campbell, I couldn't help think of Lanegan as a kind of country-rock Ol' Dirty Bastard (R.I.P), enlisted to add an air of debauchery to other people's records. OK, so I was wrong! The whole enterprise might have appeared more cynical had Campbell been trying to deliver an imitation of dust-blown authenticity. However, this is more revisionist high-jinx than soul-searching alt-country: no naked emotional honesty here, but rather fully-costumed period theatre in the mould of Lee & Nancy or Johnny Cash. Like Micah P Hinson's fine `... Red Empire Orchestra`, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan's output is stylised and cinematic, not as bleak or skeletal as some more orthodox Stateside folk and country.

If you were not persuaded by `Sunday at Devil Dirt', the `Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart EP` may change your mind. Asides the gorgeous eponymous single taken from the album, the EP comprises five tracks "kept back" from the LP for release later in the year - and a timely little stocking filler it is too! I consider myself a Christmassy person, and it may be just me but I can't help hearing in the tracks selected for this EP a kind of Yuletide warmth. `Fight Fire With Fire' finds Lanegan Leonard Cohening-it-up over a woozy fireside waltz (hmm, is that possible?) that recalls Sheffield's own retro crooner Richard Hawley. Rather drowse-inducing in its repetition, is swirls gently around in a one-two-many-mulled-wines-dozing-off-in-a-comfy-chair kind of way. 'Asleep On A Sixpence' is a cello and piano-led vagabond ballad that sounds like Tom Waits gatecrashing a Christmas carol concert, an effect evoked by the appropriation of `While Shepherd's Watch Their Flocks' as an outro. `Rambling Rose' is admittedly not seasonal at all, unless you consider tumbleweeds and pedal steel guitar part of your regular yuletide get-up. But again Campbell puts just enough reverb into the mix to subtly subvert the country textures with an air of languid detachment. Finally, `Hang On' is Lanegan-free dream pop featuring Isobel Cambell's sweet, airy vocals over a delicate guitar refrain that recalls early Velvet Underground, but with Nico's voice somehow digitally de-Germanified. First published at the Line of Best Fit.