Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, October 30 at the El Rey

The Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan show I might have skipped, as much as I like Campbell on album and Lanegan on anything, but Carla was all in for it. She got us tickets, which were bafflingly not sold out, and it was a Friday, at the end of the day of celebrating Halloween at work. We were even able to make our way to within ten feet of the stage, though that show was more about the music than people on stage. To even further make that point, in standard stage lighting for a concert Campbell and the band were lit well but Lanegan was, more than likely, purposely outside of a spotlight. He wasn't harder to see so much as dimly lit to enhance his physical darkness and gloom, the contrast with Campbell's light and beauty being what makes their music so fascinating, listenable, and unique. Lanegan might have been adding some dark to the light but the brightness was also able to shine into his dimness. The music was its own slow, pretty thrill, an old-school country twang at parts, some bits from Campbell's cello that would have been suitable for slow-dancing (if anyone in L.A. ever did that in public). Opener Willie Mason (whose performance we missed) came on stage to reprise some of the parts he did on the most recent record, and Victoria Williams came by for a cameo, but none of the extra performers ever distracted from the two main stars, carefully balancing each other out between darkness and light. (I couldn’t find the set-list for the show that we were at but the songs and order seemed very similar for the other shows on that tour that I found.)