Dead Can Dance - Toward the Within

    Dead Can Dance – Toward The Within

    02 Feb

    By

    Label: 4AD – DAD3627
    Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
    Country: UK & Europe
    Released: 11 Nov 2016
    Genre: Rock, Folk, World, Country
    Style: Ethereal, Goth Rock, Modern Classical, Folk

    After a relaxed afternoon listening to some recent purchases from Discogs, I called my friend Mark.

    “Mate, when you pop over later, could you please bring a record brush?”
    “Cool, will do.”

    A couple hours later, he arrived with a record brush in one hand and a vinyl record in the other. I am glad that I still feel that pang of excitement when someone brings new music.

    “What’s this?” I asked with some anticipation.
    “Dead Can Dance……..live” he said with a sly smile.

    I knew we were in for a treat but I wasn’t expecting that this record would become one of my perennial favourites.

    Dead Can Dance is a British and Australian music duo composed of Robert Perry and Lisa Gerrard first established in Melbourne in 1981. How do you describe their music? Music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance’s style as “constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock.”

    Let’s call it world music with a spiritual bent. Whatever you label it, one thing is for sure. Lisa Gerrard’s powerful and ethereal voice transcends culture, generational identity and time.

    Toward the Within” is the first official live album released by the group. It was recorded in one take in November 1993 in the Mayfair Theatre in Santa Monica, California and released in October 1994. The album features several guest musicians including Brendan Perry´s brother Robert on percussion, flute and guitar. This remarkable album only reveals itself to be a live recording in between each song. Dead Can Dance’s goth, darkwave vision is captured here live and uber-intense.

    The opening track ‘Rakim’ sets the scene with Perry singing to a Middle-Eastern drum beat which increases in grandeur & complexity as the song unfolds. Powerful & beautiful.

    Lisa begins the next track ‘Persian Love Song’ and you are transported across the ages in some baroque opera. Singing with no instruments, her celestial voice commands your attention physically, emotionally & spiritually. You feel exposed, open to mystical, unseen energies. It conjures an image of a forlorn, lonely goddess calling out to other worlds.

    ‘Desert Song’ re-connects to the Middle-Eastern vibe of the album’s introduction with Brendan Perry eliciting visions of sand dunes, camels and mirages and then Lisa comes back with ‘Yulunga’, an otherworldly, deep melodic chanting……a song that could have easily been used in the score of Gladiator, Dune or any epic movie. At this stage, you are deep into the Dead Can Dance ‘experience’, an esoteric shamanic ritual with tribal spirits awakening in the bird cries. Her voice is like a magic carpet that levitates you and opens portals to other dimensions.

    The flutes, cellos, and drums add a rich, textured, interesting flair to the songs but there is no question that Lisa and Brendan, with their alternating leads, catapult this live show into the stratosphere. After a short flute piece to calm the mood, Lisa belts out ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, a traditional ode that tells of love and loss. It is difficult to imagine any singer in the world singing this song better than this rendition.

    Brendan then sings his version of Sinead O’Connor’s “I Am Stretched Across Your Grave” followed by the awesome ‘I Can See Now’ and ‘American Dreaming’. Accompanied by a solitary acoustic guitar, these songs showcase his ability to convey raw emotion vocally.

    Lisa then sings “Cantara” which begins with a simple serenity and morphs into a complex, energetic, tribal madness. After ‘Oman’, ‘The Song of the Sibyl’ brings Lisa’s searing & captivating vocals back to the fore as they sing this hymn against the backdrop of a pipe organ. The songs ‘Tristan’ and ‘Sanvean’ in particular seem to raise Lisa’s vocal performance to another level and the closing track ‘Don’t Fade Away’ is a perfect bookend to this performance.

    I feel that this album is a masterpiece on a number of levels, including the fact that it’s a concert album that showcases new material and never settles into a comfortable, predictable composition. It has intensity and energy yet also subtlety and introversion. It is musically transcendent and offers a bountifulness of sound and culture.

    Needless to say, both Gerrard’s and Perry’s performances are flawless and provide a nice contrast to each other. Brendan’s sound is more grounded here on earth as he sings in a wonderfully deep and hypnotic way. Singing mostly in her own ‘idioglossia’, Lisa’s vocals are often lengthy, ethereal and beautiful. I am convinced that she’s not entirely from this world.

    With its lucid sound, dreamy creativity, stylistic variety and mind-blowing power, ‘Toward the Within’ deserves to be praised among Dead Can Dance’s finest moments and it’s certainly one of my favourite albums. Enjoy!

    I listened to the 2016 reissued version of the record. Original 1994 editions are quite rare and command upwards of $290.

    Track Listing

    1. Rakim
    2. Persian Love Song
    3. Desert Song
    4. Yulunga (Spirit Dance)
    5. Piece For Solo Flute
    6. The Wind That Shakes The Barley
    7. I Am Stretched On Your Grave
    8. I Can See Now
    9. American Dreaming
    10. Cantara
    11. Oman
    12. Song Of The Sibyl
    13. Tristan
    14. Sanvean
    15. Don’t Fade Away

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