Moroni's Review of Dead Can Dance's "Anastasis"

I have to admit.  I have been waiting to do this review for a long time.  I never thought this day would come.  It has been sixteen years since Dead Can Dance came out with a new album.

There are times in my life when - the first time I heard certain music - it changed me forever.  A sort of "WTF" moment.  The first time I heard AC/DC.  Rick James.  Korn.  And one of those moments was the first time I heard Dead Can Dance.

It was 1986.  Sixteen years-old.  Their album "Spleen and Ideal."  When I first heard the name "Dead Can Dance", I assumed that it was gothic music.  And it was, kind of.  But it transcended that label.  World music.  New Age.  It went kind of beyond all of them.

The majestic sweep of "De Profundis" with the crashing voice of Lisa Gerrard.  She wasn't singing words.  It sometimes sounded Latin.  Sometimes it sounded Arabic.  In truth, there weren't any words to it at all.  Like the speech of an infant, it was the pure expression of emotion.  The next song was "Ascension" - a duet of trombones that literally made me imagine climbing the face of a snow-capped mountain peak.  To this day, I can think of no better song than "Avatar".  It is so stripped down - a drum, a bass guitar, and a scintillating hammered dulcimer with Lisa Gerrard's wavering, Stevie Nicks-ish voice building to such an emotional crescendo that it still brings tears to my eyes.

Of course, Lisa Gerrard is only one half of Dead Can Dance.  The other half is Brendan Perry.  His smooth, collected baritone was the antithesis of Gerrard's voice on songs like "The Cardinal Sin".  Truthfully, I much preferred Lisa Gerrard's songs and would find myself fast-forwarding past HIS songs.  As I have grown older, I appreciate Brendan Perry's songs much more.

This album changed my life.  It changed the way I looked at art.  It influenced my poetry.  I got more into classical music.  I even started reading French poet, Charles Baudelaire.  (The name "Spleen and Ideal" is taken from his poetry.)

I also got into Dead Can Dance's back catalog - one EP and one self-titled album.  Dead Can Dance came out of the punk movement in Melbourne, Australia in the late 1970s.  They lived in a communal house and made music with whatever they could find in their house.  In fact, "Frontier" - from their first album - was recorded by banging on oil drums filled with water frosted with Lisa Garrard's spooky voice.  They were  not musicians and taught themselves to make music on whatever they could find.

Soon, they relocated to England and signed to the prestigious 4AD label.

When I was seventeen, they followed up with "Within the Realm of a Dying Sun", which was all orchestral, all recorded inside of a cathedral.  I bought this on vinyl - except that I only had a record player that didn't work.  On my first listen, I spun the record my hand, listening to the faint sounds coming out of the needle and grooves, with no aid of speakers, or even electricity.

My senior year of high school, I had my parents drive me to the nearest record store 40 miles away to buy "The Serpent's Egg".  By now, Dead Can Dance was steering towards a more tribal sound, with lots of percussion.  My sophmore year of college was dominated by "Aion", which sounded like a pagan Renaissance Fair.

When Dead Can Dance broke up around 1997, I was devastated.  Apparently, the marriage of the creative geniuses of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry was more than just musical.  They were a couple, and when the relationship ended, so did the band.  This band had been an important part of my life for more than a decade.

For the next ten years, I followed both of their solo careers.  One of the strangest moments for me was listening to the end credits of the movie "Gladiator" and hearing Lisa Gerrard's voice.  In the glorious days of the '80s, in the age of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, I was listening to stuff like Dead Can Dance.  No one had even heard of it, thought it was weird.  I played "Song of Sophia" in my college Music Appreciation class as my selection to share with other students.  And now, as people filed out of a movie theater, I was listening to Lisa Gerrard sing for a Holywood Blockbuster.  It was ironic.  She has since gone on to do several movies, including "The Whale Rider".

In 2005, the band reunited for touring purposes, and earlier this year, when they announced a new album called "Anastasis", I was ecstatic.

What can I say?  The album is excellent.  None of them have ever been as magical and as entrancing as  "Spleen and Ideal".  But it is still good.

As usual, the songs are split up into "His & Hers".  The album opens up with "Children of the Sun".  From its first strains, I gave a sigh of relief - it was good to hear them again.  It sounds just like Dead Can Dance - except with better engineering.  Lisa Gerrard's songs "Anabasis", "Agape", and "Kiko" sound very much like her solo efforts.  When I listen to them, I picture myself in a caravan with Marco Polo, traveling across the Gobi Desert..

Brendan Perry's songs are very good as well.  "Amnesia" - which is the first single off of the album - and "Opium" are very moving to me.  "Return of the She-King" is a collaborative effort between the two of them.  It is a nice Celtic tune that makes me think of Queen Boudica.

It is nice to see Dead Can Dance back and in good form.  It is good to see that age has only improved their talent and not diminished it.  I would recommend this album to anyone.