Artist:

Isobel Campbell

Label:

COOKING VINYL LIMITED

Genre:

Rock, Pop

Format:CDReleased:14th June 2024Catalogue No:COOKCD909XBarcode:0711297920918

Description:

2 CD Isobel Campbell first emerged as a founding member of Belle & Sebastian before releasing 3 albums with Mark Lanegan (ex Queens Of The Stone Age and The Screaming Trees). In February 2020, Isobel Campbell released her critically acclaimed solo album The Is No Other which was featured on Rough Trade US & UK as Lead Album of the Month, Album of the week and playlists on the equivalent Radio 1s across Europe and charted at #16 on Top New Artists in the USA. 4316 is the first track to be taken from Isobels forthcoming album Bow To Love. The Bonus CD is a French version of the album Place lAmour Tracklist: 1.Tout scroule et se meurt 2. Maintenant ou jamais 3. ?Araigne du soir 4. ?Je me demande juste 5. ?Place lAmour 6. ?4316 7. Dopamine 8. ?Reste calme, suis ta voie 9. ?Le fils du laboureur 10. ?Prends ce poison 11. ?Om Shanti Om 12. ?Toi 13. Ten fais pas Isobel Campbell is no stranger to navigating turmoil. On her previous album, There Is No Other (2020), she re-emerged after a decade of label trouble with a gem of subtly questing psychedelic folk. Four years on, Campbell spreads her net wider on Bow to Love, a soft-spun yet sharp-edged set of reflections on modern crises that doesnt stop at diagnosing the problems: it goes further to ask how we might progress from our tense, conflicted times. With all the dexterity the Glasgow-born singer-songwriter and cellist is known for, the result is an album of lambent surfaces and choppy riptides, a deeply personal record for today poised between hope and despair. The album is about what were all in right now, and my response to that and my life as a microcosm within that, says Campbell, before suggesting how exposing modern horrors might prove purgative. I think theres a quote from A Course In Miracles which says, Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing and release. Maybe these horrible things are coming up and out so we can get rid of them and things can be better. Her radar keenly attuned to inequities, Campbell spotlights toxic masculinity on the luminous Everything Falls Apart, its circling lilt and warm, fretless bass framing a call to unmask patriarchal power in readiness for a brand new start. My elegy to the patriarchy is how Campbell pitches it, noting how even the words we use to insult a substandard man will often blame the woman son of a bitch, bastard. The spellbinding psych-folk of Spider to the Fly and Second Guessing add themes of narcissistic abuse and repetition compulsion, lending bite to the albums take on relationships. Some songs were first conceptualised in 2016, when Brexit and Trump exacerbated what Campbell describes as real tension amongst people. Between its gently jazzy shuffle and cushioning arrangement, the Yoda-esque Do Or Die foregrounds fortitude in the face of gnawing anxieties. The rainy-day soul-pop of Keep Calm Carry On also started in 2016, when Campbell was staying at her aunts flat in Yoker and collaborator and co-producer Chris Szczech texted her from New York about the Brexit vote. Chris was saying, It looks like its going to happen but I was like, No way. And actually way. It did happen. Technology is touched on with first single 4316, an almost robo-folk-pop challenge to the idea of the transhuman: the idea that technology might sire a new stage in human evolution. Favouring honest, decent communication over AI, Campbell takes a dim view of our friend, unfriend, block, unblock culture. I know what I love and it aint that, she says. I was talking to an Uber driver the other day and I said, I dont want to be living in a video game. And he said, Well, we are. I feel like Im offering a human element in these transhuman days of artificial intelligence. The looping sing-song swing of the title track applies that open, complex thinking to myths about love: Its not enough to bow to love is the full lyric, offering a grown-up take on the matter. I grew up loving The Beatles and All You Need Is Love, Isobel says, but sometimes loves not enough. Sometimes love can get a bit wonky. Love brings up everything good, bad, ugly and it can push your buttons. To close the album, a warm cover of Dire Straitss Why Worry disregards any hipster disdain for Mark Knopflers band to find a core of consolation at the songs heart. I never really bought into all that hipster stuff, says Campbell. If something speaks to me, it speaks to me. My dad had all those records and I would always sing it to myself. In making the album, Campbell chose an environment that spoke to her, recording and co-producing the record with Szczech again in his studio in Los Angeles. The result is an inquisitive, complex and fully matured album from an artist who has travelled long and far. Campbell was first noticed as a teenage founder member of Belle & Sebastian, before she released two dream-folk solo albums under the name The Gentle Waves and left B&S in 2002. Two records under her own name followed, leading to a union with late rock-carved growler Mark Lanegan for three albums of gravelnhoney Americana duets, where Lanegan would stand aside while Campbell called the creative shots. A move to LA and a near-decade of label troubles followed; the latter ended with There Is No Other in 2020 before as Campbell puts it the world went down the crapper for the pandemic. And on Bow to Love, suggests Campbell, the worlds ongoing troubles are clear. Anyone with two eyes, a brain and a heart can see that people are struggling, and I suppose I have a lot of thoughts about that. And its this album. An album that also, says Campbell, has thoughts about how the future remains unwritten. I feel like were living in some kind of dystopia, but I think its up to us what we buy into and what we react to. We do have a choice, even if sometimes we think we dont. You can still see acts of great kindness. In all the bleakness, thats what I hang on to. We are co-creators. Where we go next is up to us. Mounted with clear-sighted artistry and care, Bow to Love is a light in the dark of uncertain times.