They were never quite so magical, so mysterious, so utterly removed from time.
Dead Can Dance's unafraid artistic reach is what mattered most, in the end. The reason why they weren't just, say, a gruesome Renaissance Faire bunch of pseudo-minstrels sitting around in greasy capes doing "Hey nonny nonnies" all day long, or alternately a snoresome 'early music' collective of hidebound museum-dwelling nobodies, was that reach. They weren't just a medieval wet dream, they tackled everything. Songs and melodies from Iran, China, Australia, more, instruments from the yang ch'in, an Asian equivalent to the hammered dulcimer which Lisa Gerrard played and still plays with astounding control, to Irish bouzoukis and drums from all over the world and back again. If world music ever meant anything, it meant it in the songs of Gerrard and Brendan Perry, her completely, totally astounding multioctave voice and glossolalic singing, his rich, rolling tones wrapped in mystery, their music which could simply reduce you to awe or tears at a moment's notice.
They released three great studio albums during the decade, not to mention A Passage in Time, their long overdue and completely necessary at the time of release introductory American compilation, but nowhere did they take so many risks as they did in concert, which is where this recording of an LA date comes in. Like few bands out there, they did not rely on the hits -- in fact, no more than four tracks out of fifteen in fact were even released previous to this disc on an album, anywhere. Instead, the live venue was always a chance for Dead Can Dance to try something more, to attempt something further, to consciously and thoroughly avoid the simple 'play the hits, intersperse with album filler' path. Assisted by five able backing musicians (including Perry's brother Robert, who is stunning on uillean pipes and flute, as his featured song "Piece for Solo Flute" makes clear), Dead Can Dance here delivered beyond what anyone must have expected.
To select individual moments almost breaks that spell which Marc Bolan, for one, demanded of the pop experience. Shall try and focus in solely on how Gerrard's a capella work on "Persian Love Song" is haunting, compelling, majestic? How "Rakim" allows Gerrard and Perry both to move beyond language to a dramatic landscape of percussive beat and deep dark beauty? How Perry takes Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Stretched On Your Grave" and proceeds to send it to a newer level of utterly unexpected atmosphere and rapture? How Gerrard sings "Sanvean" like a requiem for the entire universe as orchestrated beauty fills out behind her? Do not ask me to fully even try to capture in words what this album does, has always done.
Just listen to the way Perry plays acoustic guitar, delivers the closing "Don't Fade Away" with something that folk music as we have come to know it could never, ever approach outside the dark jewels of Tom Rapp and Nick Drake, perhaps, then sings "Good night" as a fitting conclusion. I can only remain stunned, overwhelmed.