Come Talk With Me: Isobel Campbell

According to the judges, it's one of the best British albums of the year. Isobel Campbell's ‘Ballad of the Broken Seas’ is a stunningly beautiful mix of her own lilting Scottish whisper of a voice with the gravelly, drug-inflected American drawl of The Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan. The two made it by posting parts of the songs to each other, adding on tracks an ocean apart, then polished things off together in LA. It earned Campbell recognition that she's fought for since going solo from Belle and Sebastian in 2002, along with a place on the Nationwide Mercury Prize shortlist beside acts like the Arctic Monkeys, Muse, and Thom Yorke.

But is she happy to be on that list? Last month, Scotland on Sunday reported that the singer had felt a "slump" after hearing about the nomination, and got disillusioned with the whole damn industry. Now, however, she sounds a little more optimistic."It's a shame," she sighs, "because when I said those things I was on a bad day, you know? and I was really tired. But really, it's a good thing to happen."

In fact, she adds, it wasn't the awards themselves that made her anxious, but the media spotlight she found on herself after the nominations were announced. “Initially, I was really happy and excited about it. But with a lot of the London media stuff, you're getting sort of whipped into some kind of.. excitement. And afterwards, I just got spat out of the other end. So after being quite excited, I went home, and sat down to think about what I want as an artist and that's not it. I'm still going to go [to the awards], but it's just a world that I don't neccesarily feel that I belong to."
 
As far as the competition is concerned, Campbell admits that she's not sure which way the judges will go. Partly, her own musical taste means she's not sure what she's up against. "I can't really say much about the list because, well, I can't even remember the last time I bought a ‘new’ record. I mostly listen to old-fashioned things - that's the music that I like."