Spiritchaser Review
        By Jason Ferguson, Alternative Press
        September 1996

          It's difficult finding superlatives in a career laced with them, but for Dead Can Dance's seventh album, it seems they have made their best yet. Gone is the discordant feeling that their last two albums' forced alchemy engendered; in its place is a work of genuine collaboration. True to it tile, Spiritchaser shows Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard in pursuit of the essence of their music (if not music itself). The album in so richly steeped in DCD's pan-global influences that it seems instantly out of time and place. The epic, then-minute sprawl of "Song Of The Stars" is a prime example, with "choruses" straight out of the Beatles songbook, circumscribed by South American rhythms, hypnotic samples and African chant-singing. It's certainly magical, but it's also very telling in its diversity, for Spiritchaser is all all over the place stylistically.

          However, it does not stumble on the same block that Into the Labyrinth, DCD's last studio endeavor, did. Labyrinth was certainly "diverse," but it came at the expense of cohesion and emerged as a patch collection of great songs. Spiritchaser benefits greatly from Perry and Gerrard's collaboration and mutaully divergent interests. On "Indus," their commingling voices merge with a somewhat humorous string sample [from the Beatles' "Within You Without You." --ed.], water drums and little else to create a dazzlingly narcotic piece.

          Perhaps the only fault to be found with Spiritchaser is that it is too perfect of an album, in that the songs' overwhelming solemnity is seldom lifted and the mood, once created, is never broken. However, listening to "Devorzhum," Spiritchaser's eminently elegant closing, one realizes that moods like that arent' meant to be broken.

          Of interest is a quote from Lisa Gerrard from the July 12, 1996 edition of the Boston Globe:

          "We don't know whether we stole it [the Beatles' "Within You Without You" melody] or not. We probably did, but who the hell knows?" says Gerrard. "It wasn't deliberate, because we didn't remember the record. I'm really unfamiliar with the Beatles' work, I have to confess. Brendan knows a bit more about it. But the next minute, musicologists are saying, `Oh, the first six notes are the same.' So we had to contact George Harrison, who didn't give a damn, frankly. He was gardening at the time. He said, `Oh, I like that piece of music. It's OK.' But the [record company] pushed it. So we had to give a credit to Harrison on the thing, which seems really bizarre."




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