Dead Can Dance
Hello
wonderful people…
I don’t know
what to do with this band. They’re either really good or they’re really bad…
with the exception of two songs I’ll address later. This band has been around
for a while, I haven’t listened to all of their discography but I’ve heard
enough to form an opinion on them.
(Lisa and Brendan)
If the name
sounds familiar it’s because their song “Host of Seraphim,” was used in the
movie adaptation of Stephan King’s The Mist as well as The Legend of the
Guardians… aka the owl movie that came out in 2010. They formed in Melbourne,
Australia in August of 1981 as a quartet composed of Paul Erikson on bass
guitar, Lisa Gerrard was the vocalist, Simon Monroe on drums and Brendan Perry
was the other guitarist and vocalist. Following their success in Melbourne they
relocated to London, Simon and Paul left the band making Lisa and Brendan Perry
the only two sole members of the band.
Despite the
fact practically no one I talk to seems to know of Dead Can Dance before I show
them the band… Lisa (the female vocalist of the band) has a list of
accomplishments that can be viewed here: (link to her Wikipedia) but for some building
up of the awesome, she teamed up with Hans Zimmer and they composed the soundtrack
for Gladiator and they won a golden globe for their hard work.
Here’s some
stuff from Wikipedia about her vocal range and the songs she sings:
“Gerrard possesses the vocal range of a contralto,
spanning from E3-F5. Her voice has been described as rich, deep, dark, mournful
and unique. She also has the ability to extend upwards into the dramatic mezzo-soprano range; examples of such would be on the songs The Host of Seraphim, Elegy, Space Weaver, Come This Way and One Perfect Sunrise. Gerrard however performs more predominantly in the dramatic contralto range in her other songs, Sanvean, Sacrifice, Largo and Not Yet.
Gerrard sings many of her songs, such as "Now We Are Free", "Come Tenderness", "Serenity", "The Valley of the Moon", "Tempest", "Pilgrimage of Lost Children", "Coming Home" and "Sanvean" in an idioglossia (an idiosyncratic language) that she has developed since the age of twelve.”
Dead Can Dance:
Information
And other fun stuff
They started
out the 80s with a Gothic Rock, Post-Punk sound and slowly moved out into other
genres of music. Dead Can Dance albums weren’t widely available until the 1990s
when 4AD, A British independent record label, made a distribution deal with
Warner Bros. Records and later on with Beggars Banquet Records Group.
Their second
album signaled their turn to a medieval sound and an Allmusic reviewer claimed
‘it sounded like it was recorded in an immense cathedral.’ The album went to
number 2 on the UK Indie Charts, but their luck ran out after Lisa and Brendan
split up and despite Brendan moving to Ireland and Lisa returning to Australia
the band still lived on. However, they broke up in 1998 leaving their follow up
to one of their albums in limbo. They released a box set which contained “The
Lotus Eaters,” and a two disk compilation in 2003 called “Wake.” Lisa and
Brendan released solo albums in 98 (Lisa album Duality with Pieter Bourke from
Snog and Soma) and 99 (Eye of the Hunter, Perry’s album.)
They
reunited in 2005 to release a limited edition recording of 13 shows from Dead
Can Dance’s European Tour, 8 recordings from a North American Tour, and a compilation
titled “Selections from Europe 2005,” on The Show record Label.
Dead Can
Dance released a four track EP in 2011 called “Live Happenings part 1” and part
2 came out in December of that year. They’re up to part four in the “Live
Happenings EPs.” Currently Dead Can Dance is on a reunion World tour which
started August 9th 2012 in Canada and will end October 28th
in Ireland.
The band has
released ten albums I’ve heard songs from at least five of them. I like maybe
four songs in total with most of my annoyances focused on The Serpent’s Egg
album. Dead Can Dance has great potential to be completely amazing with their
unique sound, and they’ve proved it many times… however there’s no middle
ground with them… and that bothers me.
I’m going to
say that I can play the flute but I’m not super talented to a point where I
think I could do it better than Lisa and Brendan, but I am a writer, and I know
that if I don’t like something I get rid of it in some way shape or form. They
might like the majority of that they release but in all honesty, I like the
band because their songs annoyed the hell out of me until I had no choice but
to listen to them so I could get it out of my head. Quite literally the only
exception to that statement is Ulysses. I had no idea what to do with “Host of
Seraphim,” but it got stuck in my head so much that I downloaded it so whenever
it was in my head I didn’t have to go crazy trying to remember what it was in
case I forgot the name of the song because when I first heard it, it sounded
like a bunch of gibberish… and that’s because it is gibberish… or chanting…
something…
The Serpent’s Egg Mini Review
(Serpent's Egg Album Cover)
My opinion
on the album is mixed… I hate some of the songs, like Severance. I didn’t want
to listen to the song even for the review because it’s a Brendan song and he
sounds bored when he sings. On the other hand the other songs are okay… I don’t
really love any of the songs on this album. I can’t bring myself to hate it,
love it, or even like the album.
Why I hate The Serpent’s Egg
Severance is
the first reason I hate The Serpents Egg album. Brendan sounds bored as all get
out, and I can’t stand his voice in this song, actually I have yet to find a
song where he’s singing actual lyrics that I actually like. The second reason
Orbis De Ignis (Latin for World of Fire) I couldn’t care less about that song…
it’s short, not even in Latin, and then repeats which kind of confused me at
first, not that random repeating in the middle of the song is bad, but it does
confuse me. (Girl in Byakkoya by Hirasawa Susumu is guilty of that too but I
love that song.)
Chant of the Paladin sounds like Lisa has some kind of congestion and was trying to sing something but it came out like that and they kept it. There’s no change in anything and I can stand monotonous songs… however Chant of the Paladin does it all wrong it’s You’re A Goth all over again but worse because it doesn’t change. At lease Rudy Ratzinger put verses and choruses in his song! Echolalia is a ridiculous song and I can’t take it seriously. I want to laugh at it and then after the third or fourth repeat of chanting I want to tell them both to shut up and stop it because they sound ridiculous
(Severance)
Chant of the Paladin sounds like Lisa has some kind of congestion and was trying to sing something but it came out like that and they kept it. There’s no change in anything and I can stand monotonous songs… however Chant of the Paladin does it all wrong it’s You’re A Goth all over again but worse because it doesn’t change. At lease Rudy Ratzinger put verses and choruses in his song! Echolalia is a ridiculous song and I can’t take it seriously. I want to laugh at it and then after the third or fourth repeat of chanting I want to tell them both to shut up and stop it because they sound ridiculous
(Chant of the Paladin)
Why I Like The Serpent’s Egg
The
beginning of Ullyses is perfect. I wouldn’t change it for the world. Mother
Tongue has a good bounce in the beat, it’s interesting and I quite like it
despite the fact that its five minutes long. It seems like the one beat will go
on forever but after a minute and a half of the cool bouncy beat it stops and
changes completely to something completely sneaky and slightly mysterious and
then it crashes and burns because it doesn’t go back to the bouncy beginning
beat…
(Ullyses)
(Mother Tongue)
Why The Serpent’s Egg is Boring
They’re
trying to convey some grand and epic feel to it but it’s just empty. Song of Sophia
is an empty song, there’s emotion there but I don’t care for it. Nothing stands
out about it. Seriously nothing at all and that’s kind of sad. Brendan has
boring vocals and they’re only vaguely interesting towards the second half of
Ullyses, but not really… his voice is lacking something that Lisa’s voice has
and I still haven’t figured out what… but I do think if Lisa were to sing
Brendan’s parts it wouldn’t work. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place
with this topic.
(Song of Sophia)
Overall Opinion
The album is
okay, it’s not great, and it’s not terrible, it’s okay. Should it be the first
album you listen to if you don’t know the band? I have no idea this band is
like Corvus Corax, an acquired taste and you probably have to like bands of
their genre otherwise you’re going to hate just about everything they do.
The Good of Dead Can Dance
Like I
mentioned before in the ‘why I like The Serpent’s Egg,’ those songs are good
Dead Can Dance songs. Mesmerism from their second studio album Spleen and Ideal
(released in 1985 when the band was a quartet,) is a really great song. That’s
one of their good songs. The gibberish chanting isn’t annoying or overbearing
like it can be in some of their songs, all of the song’s elements flow together
and after the chanting there’s actual lyrics.
(Mesmerism)
Mesmerism’s
lyrics:
“Frail
of heart
Renounce your fears
Locked away inside
All these years
Remain in light
Renounce your fears
For you have been mesmerized
Break this spell of silence”
Renounce your fears
Locked away inside
All these years
Remain in light
Renounce your fears
For you have been mesmerized
Break this spell of silence”
It’s buried
under everything else that’s going on but if you listen you’ll hear it. It took
me a while but I don’t mind it since Hagalaz Runedance does the same thing with
Mother of Times but that’s another review for another time.
Redharc from their album Aion, another song with repetitive chanting that I like probably because her voice isn't all over the place and wobbling. Brendan isn't singing in the song either so that helps dramatically.
(I couldn't find a video on youtube or anywhere else for that matter other than this video result google gave me, and I didn't see an embed code... sorry)
Last but not least, "Bird" from their album "A Passage of Time." "Bird" has a tribal sound to it, I'm not sure if that's the politically correct term for it but it sounds tribal to me so that's what I'm calling it.
Also, Saltarello kind of sounds like a song you'd expect from Corvus Corax, but it's not, there's something missing I believe it's a the bass parts that Corvux Corax adds that makes it not a Corvus Corax song. However it's one of their good ones so here it is.
(Saltarello)
The Bad of Dead Can Dance
Their
earlier works are terrible… as boring as Brendan sounds, his voice does not mix
with an 80’s gothic rock stylized song… and that’s the content of most of their
first album. On that note, I also don’t like Brendan’s singing. It annoys me
and Lisa gets confused with chanting an yodeling sometimes… the fluxions in her
voice make her sound like she’s standing by a fan and singing with a majority
of Dead Can Dance songs and most of the time it doesn’t work. There’s no in between
for the band which is never a good thing because if there’s no middle ground
the song is either great or it’s terrible. I don’t like hit or miss bands I
prefer the middle ground so I have something that I will always enjoy listening
to on some level. I can go months without listen to Dead Can Dance and
completely forget they’re on my computer because I just can’t care for the
band. They have plenty of talent but if Brendan’s going to sing he needs to do
the chanting gibberish and avoid actual lyrics because he’s too dull to listen
to.
Conclusion
I wanted to
review Mesmerism and the two songs from Serpent’s Egg, but I didn’t have enough
material for both songs to make a proper review I liked. So as a result, this
happened as well as listening to five whole albums of Dead Can Dance. I wasn’t
very happy with the results. The fact they either have really terrible songs or
really good songs annoys me and I don’t have a solid decision of the band, I
can’t hate them because they have a few good songs but I don’t love them nor do
I particularly like them. Therefore I can’t recommend them to anyone because
there’s nothing I can say to really sell them to people. Soil and Eclipse,
Wumpscut, Assemblage 23, those are bands I can promote and talk about endlessly
because they have some really great songs, they have some okay songs, and of
course they have some not so great songs. I won’t discourage anyone from
listening to Dead Can Dance but if you’re new to their genre and sound you
might not like the band at all. You’ll know if you like Dead Can Dance if you
like medieval music and chanting or tribal styled music… That’s the only way I
can describe this band.
