Dead Can Dance

Artists: Dead Can Dance
P: 2012
Dead Can Dance always produced music that was timeless. It therefore strikes as an evidence that they should come back after a 16 years hiatus. Time has mended their differences, and they now appear as a mature musical couple only too happy to forget the bad memories to show that they have much pleasure creating beautiful music together.
The opening track, "Children Of The Sun", sung by Brendan Perry, introduces the general feel of the album. It is deliciously atmospheric. It is Dead Can Dance as a well-aged wine. Less extravagant than in the past but every bit as elaborate, it delivers a very satisfying feeling of plenitude. The tone of the album is given. Follows the slow and very easy to like "Anabasis" sung by Lisa Gerrard, and "Anastasis" slowly unfolds. It is no longer groundbreaking as their first albums were, more a voyage where they take us by the hand for a luxuriant visit into their sophisticated world.
Never production on a Dead Can Dance opus sounded so polished. Not a moment feels cheap or unchallenging to the ear. Both singers have exceptional voices that suit their style perfectly, and they are at their best here. Lisa Gerrard leads four songs (including one, the opulent "The Return Of The She-King" where her partner joins in at the end), as does Brendan Perry. Eight songs may seem on paper like too simple an effort after 16 years, but all songs are in the five to seven minutes range, and most importantly, there is a sense of unity, an "album feel", that is very powerful in this release. Where the old albums were always original, individual songs didn't always flow as strongly into a sense of unity proper to a definite album. There was sometimes a feeling that each song had its determined personality, and contrast between each song was looked after as much as album cohesion. With "Anastasis", there is a more definite sense of musical entity, and while ethnic flavors are very present (Middle Eastern in "Agape" or Irish in "The Return Of The She-King"), it all blends majestically together into a consistent and coherent mood - and a sumptuous album.
Repeat auditions of Dead Can Dance's long-awaited reunion album have only managed to reinforce my spontaneous conviction that indeed it was worth waiting sixteen years.

Artists: Dead Can Dance
P: 1986 / 1994
Although they released their self-titled debut album in 1984, it was 1986's SPLEEN AND IDEAL which brought Dead Can Dance, the duo of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, into their distinctive style. The debut consisted of guitar-heavy 80s-mood pieces, but in SPLEEN AND IDEAL Lisa and Brendan make their first experiment in classical structures and unique songs.

The album opens with three songs centered around Lisa's voice over orchestral instruments, "De Profundis," "Ascension," and "Circumradiant Dawn." Then, Brendan Perry provides the first of his deeply philosophical songs in "The Cardinal Sin." The fifth track, "Mesmerism," features the last English lyrics Lisa ever sang with Dead Can Dance with her yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer) accompaniment over a drum machine. "Enigma of the Absolute" is perhaps Perry's most lyrically perfect song. "Advent" is another Perry track, that features the most rock-like structure on the album. "Avatar" is Lisa's final contribution to the album, an Oriental trip through drums and yangqin that climaxes with a frenzy of Lisa's glossolalia. Finally, the album closes with "Indoctrination," which sums up well Perry's world-view during the early part of Dead Can Dance's career.

SPLEEN AND IDEAL is another one of the few albums that I own which is so consistent that I cannot name a bad track. It is one of Dead Can Dance's finest efforts, and definitely should be one of the first albums you pick up by this superbly talented duo.