The incomparable Dead Can Dance – reunited after seven years for a European tour that kicks off tonight in the Olympia – have created a sound that diverges sharply from anything else in contemporary rock/pop, drawing on ancient and sacred musics from around the world.
Lisa Gerrard floats onstage in a floor-length yellow kimono, takes position behind her ‘yang chin’ (ancient Chinese dulcimer) and launches into ‘Nierika’ from the Spiritchaser album.
A dazzling array of instruments, including a medieval hurdy-gurdy – played by Brendan Perry in ‘Salterello’, a song he describes as “medieval rock ’n’ roll” – propel the band along their tribal, ethereal, gothic, erotic, dangerous, apocalyptic and shamanic musical path. Alongside some new songs are old favourites like ‘Black Sun In A White World’, ‘Severance’, ‘Sanvean’, ‘How Fortunate The Man With None’ and Gerrard’s stunning rendition of the United Irishmen lament, ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’.
The multi-instrumentalists in the band are superb, but what really defines Dead Can Dance is the extraordinarily powerful, perfectly merged vocal combination of Perry and Gerrard. Lisa gives the goddess routine the whole nine yards, and there’s something Puck or Pan-like about Perry, too. Certainly, they’re channeling the divine when they sing. Gerrard’s voice is operatic, classically controlled but shining with her personality; at times it casts a gentle light into dark emotional places, at others, it shakes you to your very foundations.
On a night as magical as this, it's clear that Dead Can Dance tap into something ancient and mysterious.
How great to have them back.