Pitchfork

As Belle & Sebastian soldier on without her, chanteuse Isobel Campbell recently signed V2, who will release not one but two albums by the dewy-voiced indie-pop goddess next year. The product of a long-distance collaboration with Screaming Trees/Queens of the Stone Age howler Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas will appear sometime early in 2006, but a single, the duo's cover of Hank Williams' "Ramblin' Man", will come out as soon as November in the UK. The single will feature two B-sides, "Further into the Night" and "Revolver (Part 2)", the latter being an alternate version of a Lanegan-penned number that appears on the proper album. You can find it in here somewhere:

01 Deus Ibi Est
02 Black Mountain
03 The False Husband
04 Ballad of the Broken Seas
05 Revolver
06 Ramblin' Man
07 (Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me
08 Saturday's Gone
09 It's Hard to Kill a Bad Thing
10 Honey Child What Can I Do?
11 Dusty Wreath
12 The Circus Is Leaving Town

Writing in her website's journal back in April, Campbell contrasted Ballad with a second album she'd worked on around the same time: "[The second] record is delicate and sparse. Inspired by magic, fertility, lunar cycles and leading ladies of folk-- Jean Ritchie and Shirley Collins. It is an even mixture of new compositions and old folk ballads. I imagine many of the songs as bewitched lullabies." Sounds like it'll fit right in with Devendra, Joanna and all those freaky forest children.

In April, that album's working title was Over the Wheat and the Barley, which has since become the less farm-evoking Milk White Sheets. Campbell and V2 currently plan a late 2006 release for Sheets, which contains help from ex/future(?) Smashing Pumpkin James Iha and Soup Dragons guitarist Jim McCullough. Stevie Nicks must have been busy.