Toward the Within [PA]

Performer: Original Soundtrack/Dead Can Dance
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Dead Can Dance: Lisa Gerrard (vocals, yang ch'in, percussion), Brendan Perry (vocals, guitar, percussion, whistle, Irish bouzouki), Robert Perry (uillean pipes, Irish bouzouki, whistle, percussion), Andrew Claxton (keyboards), John Bonnar (keyboards, vocals, percussion), Lance Hogan (bass, guitar, percussion, vocals), Ronan O'Snodaigh (percussion, vocals). Dead Can Dance's TOWARD THE WITHIN is a live album, but don't let that persuade you not to buy it. Most of the tracks here (11 of 15) are not on any of the group's studio records, and all of them are flat-out spectacular. This is one of the band's best albums, live or otherwise. The opener, "Rakim," condenses everything that makes Dead Can Dance a brilliant band into six minutes. Musically, it features an instrumental introduction with a dense, droning backing while a bouzouki skitters across the surface and, eventually, a strikingly expressive percussion section. Vocally, it features Brendan Perry singing in a language that you are unlikely to know, Lisa Gerrard's fabulous voice yodeling in a way you have never heard, and a last verse, in English, delivered in Perry gorgeous, resonant tones. If this doesn't sell you on this band, nothing will. The best track here, though, is Perry's amazing singer/songwriter turn on "American Dreaming," which stands out like a blast of cool breeze on a hot day when its simplicity is compared to the band's denser material. Of all the DCD albums, this one shows the group stretching the farthest, and succeeding all the way.

NME (Magazine) (2/18/95, p.51) - 7 - Very Good - "...an exquisitely frosty live document. Lisa Gerrard's sometimes wordless excursions into the netherworld are perfectly countered by Brendan Perry's internal excavations of emotion..."

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