Isobel Campbell on Radio Città del Capo

IsobelCampbell
Originally uploaded by aabitia.

Isobel Campbell is a singer from Scotland who has recaptured the essence of 60s chamberpop, folk and jazz, with her nursery-rhyme-like songs and her wistful, whisper of a voice. I am in like with this woman. I mean look at her holding that terrier...how could a man go wrong with a mousy-voiced, could-be Sesame Street cast member holding a terrier? Impossible. That creepy musing aside, if you enjoy music like Astrud Gilberto, Bacharach, and Belle & Sebastian, you might give her a listen. Her music is simple and beautiful, and in my opinion, absolutely buries most of the stuff getting airplay today, which is long on perfectly manufactured "edginess", noise and effects, but short on melody, meaning and cool sweetness.

If you'd like to hear some samples of her music and her thoughts on her music, you can listen to an interview of her on Radio Citta del Capo, which is a radio station in Bologna, Italy, in the Tuscan region, a region quite well known as the birthplace of all manner of exotic machines, from Ferraris to Ducatis. (Maybe it's her red jacket that got me to thinking of that.)

You may not realize that, despite my slight rhapsodic stumbling above about terriers and Sesame Street, I am showing considerable demureness in my description of Ms. Campbell, which is of course because I am a gentleman. Contrast this with the average ESPNed male, who would term her "friggin' hot dude" in between swigs of Busch. But after listening to this interview, hopefully you will understand why I have completely pledged my eternal devotion to her, though I have not yet actually contacted her to articulate said pledge with 12 page discourses in longhand, or perhaps with randomly clipped individual letters and phrases from fashion magazines, nicely arranged and pasted to form various messages on white college-ruled paper. Those tokens of affection might be considered by some dark-minded people to be a bit "tacky", and they may claim that such will not achieve the desired effect on the lady in question. Pish-posh, I say; they know nothing of romance.

Anyway, the half-hour interview is mostly in Italian, for all you Italian speakers out there, but you can still hear quite a lot of her answers in English, and also various tracks from her latest album, "Amorino", which, loosely translated means "angelic child". To listen to this interview, click here, then click on the link, "Ascolta!".