When one thinks of Dead Can Dance, the mind’s eye conjures up a multitude of fantastical adjectives. Glorious. Spiritual. Worldly. Hypnotic. Original.
From their 1984 eponymous (and rather gothic) debut, to the South American flavouring of 1988’s The Serpent’s Egg, the dark and mysterious Into The Labyrinth (1993), and finally to the Native American-influenced Spiritchaser (1996); these two kindred spirits, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, have produced a body of work that simply defies the nature of popular music.
After they disbanded shortly after the release of Spiritchaser, the hope of another Dead Can Dance album was seemingly a pipedream.
So it came as something of a heady surprise last year when it was revealed to Perry and Gerrard’s legions of fans that a new album of original material was to be released from the gothic-world-trance duo.
When Anastasis came out in August 2012, tantalisingly brushed with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern textures, it was immediately evident that the 16-year wait was worth it.
Soaring, exotic, and mesmerising, it was everything one could have hoped for – and more. By turns lush and epic, dark and esoteric, gentle and tender; their ninth LP is a masterwork of imagination and intelligence.
Along with the album, for the first time in over two decades, Dead Can Dance returned to their continent of birth for a series of shows that will prove once and for all that these two artists are of the highest caliber.
“I can communicate the stories of the heart so much more effectively without words.”
Lisa Gerrard, watching the smoke of a bushfire from her home in Gippsland, lends a nervous chuckle when it’s mentioned that even though there was such a lengthy gap between albums, it feels as if Anastasis could have been released just a short time after Spiritchaser – such is the organic nature of their trajectory.
“I was a teenager when I first started working with Brendan; it was a long time ago, and it’s quintessentially very much who we are as musicians,” she explains.
“[Whether] an artisanship or an apprenticeship – it came through in the work, it’s innately who you’ve become as an artist, you understand? So we’re going to sound like ‘us’, if you know what I mean!”
She laughs gently. “I mean, if we didn’t, I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’”
“We’ve been doing this for such a long time,” she explains simply, “because this is the journey of our lives.”
It’s the bond that Gerrard and Perry share that is most apparent in Dead Can Dance’s oeuvre. Both in the academic sense (“We cross-pollinate each other’s work,” she says) and the emotional (“there’s a bond over our love for the work”), the linchpin of their relationship and their collaboration has always been a fastidiously studied sense of communication.
However, Gerrard admits, it can be a “very tricky” thing, dealing with the clumsy tools that words can be. Which may be one of the reasons that in the majority of her songs, she does not sing in any particular language at all.
Using her deeply emotive and angelic voice as an instrument in its own right, the 51-year-old is able to usher the listener into another world, the listener’s imagination being its own guide.
“I can communicate the stories of the heart so much more effectively without words,” she reveals. “When it comes to communicating with words, I find they so often get lost and mistranslated!” And it is that spellbinding voice Gerrard wields – most notably on new songs ‘Return Of The She-King’ and ‘Agape’ – that absolutely grips the listener.
“The singing comes from a different level,” she confides gently. “I can’t put it any other way: it is who I am. It’s more who I am than my personality, or my ability to simply… shop at the supermarket!” Her ensuing laugh is intoxicating.
“When I sing, I suddenly feel like I’ve reached a potential of what I am as a human being; otherwise I just don’t feel that sense with other things. My singing is absolutely what I am. And it connects me,” she continues with growing intensity, “to everything: the universe, to my inner love-machine, to my emotional centre; to the emotional centre of others. It creates bridges and pathways, it… excites,” she concludes the final world tingling with emphasis.
“When I respond to a piece of music and it excites me, then there’s no limit to what I believe I can give to it.”
She takes a deep breath and allows the words to sink in. Her voice mellows, “when I respond to a piece of music and it excites me, then there’s no limit to what I believe I can give to it.”
Having just completed two breathtaking shows at the opulent interiors of the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne’s Palais Theatre, Dead Can Dance are playing one last Australian show for the Perth Festival before heading to international waters, playing Japan, then Europe – taking in Barcelona music festival Primavera Sound – and then America as part of the mammoth Coachella 2013 lineup.
For the feminine half of Dead Can Dance, the experience of touring is more about travelling than simply ‘playing gigs’. Gerrard muses at length about the vibrancy of different cultures, and how throughout the thousands of years of its existence, humanity has subconsciously known of its ability to connect to civilisations from aeons ago.
Sadly, in this age of Google and Facebook, the ability to connect with one another is – ironically – being slowly eroded, Gerrard notes: “I think that’s what makes getting together in a large space and communicating artistically really important.”
“Because I do see that [society as] becoming more and more insular. And when we get together in an inner sense of community, when we can walk away from the horrible reality of mediocrity – the situations we deal with in everyday life – and we can be somewhere where we just celebrate in an innocent way, wonderful things like music and art and poetry and learning… learning things that are thousands of years old, that are full of wisdom, that celebrate the sanctity of life that we need to find.”
Gerrard chuckles gently, the smile in her voice glowing like a sunrise over the Mediterranean sky.
Anastasis is out now through Liberation, read the Tone Deaf review here. Dead Can Dance play one last show at the Perth Concert Hall for the Perth Festival, details below, before heading off to Japan and Europe.
Perth Festival 2013 – Dead Can Dance
February 9th 2013 – Perth Concert Hall, Perth WA
Tickets: ticketek.com.au
