Isobel Campbell

Sending Signals

Putting last week behind us, this was genuinely one of my favourite conversations I’ve had for the show.

Like many, I was first aware of Isobel as member of Scottish indie band Belle and Sebastian. I found her such a compelling figure. She looked like she had stepped out of a French new wave movie. She was a cello player in an indie rock band. And when she sang, she had this enigmatic, whisper-quiet vocal style.

While still a member of Belle and Sebastian she made a couple of solo albums under the name The Gentle Waves, the second of which, “Swansong For You”, is particularly lovely and one I listened to a lot when I was younger. It was recently reissued for Record Store Day.

She left Belle and Sebastian in the middle of a US tour in 2002. Things were somewhat complicated by her romantic entanglement with the bands frontman Stuart Murdoch, and the unravelling of that relationship clearly ramped up the tension for Isobel.

We get into it in our chat, and I reference some comments she made in a recent Uncut magazine feature, I think it was in the December 2023 issue. If you have access to it, it’s definitely worth reading in the light of our conversation. It was a reminder to me, that for as much as we can get fascinated and a degree of entertainment out of the interpersonal relationships and fallouts in the history of bands we love, on the other side of it are real people and real feelings, and I was certainly reminded of that during out chat.

Isobel also made 3 well-received albums with the late Mark Lanegan, and clearly Mark’s well-documented erratic behaviour also took a toll on Isobel, and that bleeds into our chat as well.

We also talk about her recent single 4316. We delve into her fascinating childhood. It’s a “life, the universe and everything” chat this week. I hope you enjoy it.

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