LIVE REVIEWS -
BRENDAN PERRY at The Scala, King's Cross, London
14 October 1999
FOR the uninitiated, Brendan Perry was one half of the mighty 4AD band Dead Can Dance. His deep baritone was the perfect compliment to Liza Gerrard' s unique etherial singing style and which was all part of a musical vision encompassing everything from mediaeval Italian dances to warped blues, African chants to devotional church music.
JACKSON BOLLOX GOES ALL GOTH IN THE SMOKE...
Now Dead Can Dance has effectively split up, Perry and Gerrard are ploughing separate musical furrows, with Perry showing he is still willing to experiment with the many musical styles tried out by his former band.
Although this was his first solo London show in six years, Perry still managed to pack the Scala with fans ranging from touch-of-the-tomb goths to a few suits fresh from the office. But from the moment he strummed out the chords to Tim Buckley's "I Must Have Been Blind", Perry proved he has the vocal range to match anything Buckley did.
In fact he seems to be something of a Buckley obsessive, also playing "Dolphins" and the sublime set closer "Song to the Siren" (so memorably covered by Elizabeth Fraser on 4AD under the "This Mortal Coil" banner).
The choice of his own material reached right back to the very first DCD ep through to his latest release "Eye of the Hunter", a deeply sombre album unfortunately unlikely to get much airplay in the current musical climate.
It was a surprisingly reverential show. No one shouted out any requests. But there must have been those would have killed to hear "Severance" (which Bauhaus has been covering live) or "Fortune Presents Gifts Not According To The Book", which show off his voice to great effect.
Yet Perry proved there is much more to him that what you get on Eye of the Hunter, playing with a full band he cranked up some solid blues numbers which would give Robert Cray a run for his money and delivered classic crowd-pleasing DCD numbers such as "American Dreaming" and "The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove".
With DCD music seemingly being used more and more in TV documentaries and recently for the Government's child immunisation campaign, it may be that they as a band are being discovered by a wider audience a little too late. But Perry proved that his new music has the same timeless quality as his former band and that wonderful, wonderful voice is still intact and richer than ever.
Jackson Bollox
FRUG! note - this was Mr Bollox' birthday. Happy birthday, Jackson!
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