How Fortunate the Man With None

#6: Dead Can Dance - 12th October: USA Chicago. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I went to one of the shows during the tour from which these CDs were recorded. For this and other reasons (which I'm about to go into in more detail), it should be noted that this pick is more subjective than most. Sure, picking ten albums and ranking them is a subjective exercise in and of itself, but that's a subject for another time (and, quite frankly, some other blogger--any other blogger).

I came late to the Dead Can Dance party, and through the back door besides. The group had already said their piece and hung it up by the time I first heard of them, and then only because I was just becoming familiar with the excellent work of Lisa Gerrard (although a show on Hearts of Space featuring DCD may have also helped).

In any event, given the supposed bad blood between Ms. Gerrard and Brendan Perry (the other DCD principal), I had always assumed that their records would be the only way that I'd ever experience their music. Wrong.

For reasons that are still not entirely clear, the two decided to patch things up long enough to do a tour in both Europe and the U.S., and when they came to our area me and MLW were in attendance. Needless to say, I was enthralled.

None of which really describes what's to be found on this audio document of one of those shows. I like to place DCD in the "neo-gothic / medieval / world music / ambient" category...because they're not really a comfortable fit elsewhere. The show was a pretty good representation of what they do best: generally slow songs on a mixture of period and modern instruments (gotta love the hammered dulcimer!) with lyrics that are either totally incomprehensible or leaning towards such subjects as death and...well, let me put it this way: one of the pieces in their repetoire is based on a poem entitled "I am Stretched on Your Grave."

Although I selected this particular show because it was the last of the group's tour, in truth there is not a lot of variation between the performances. But Mr. Perry and Ms. Gerrard achieve a precarious balance between their two styles--she the mannered muse who uses her contralto to soothe and stun in equal measure, he the upbeat partner whose baritone rings out on songs that sometimes border on pop--that makes the whole that much stronger.

But you're probably not going to be able to dance to it.

Helpful link: Folks who want to hear for themselves can get hooked up here.