Current 93
All Dolled Up Like Christ

THE REVIEW

While nurturing an unconditional love for the band led by David Tibet, I have wisely avoided, over the years, impulsively purchasing every record release by Current 93. As we well know, Tibet certainly hasn't been ungenerous in publishing everything that crossed his mind; however, I'm particularly fond of the double live album “All Dolled Up Like Christ”, if for no other reason than that it was unexpectedly revealed to me at a stall in the used market of my miserable city. Not exactly an everyday occurrence.

And “All Dolled Up Like Christ” is truly a good product, among the best live albums released by Current 93 in its vast discography: not only does it manage to capture the magic, the atmosphere, the spiritual, dare I say religious, fervor, which are palpable during those sorts of collective rites that are live performances by Current 93, but it also comes to represent an exhaustive compendium of a specific phase of their career, serving as an ideal best of for anyone approaching Tibet and his companions for the first time.

The album immortalizes the two phantasmagorical nights (Halloween night and the following one) that Current performed at the Orensanz Foundation in New York back in 1996, and essentially has the merit of capturing the band at the peak of its folk splendor. And it is no coincidence that the most significant albums of that fortunate artistic season are plundered, namely “Thunder Perfect Mind,” “Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre,” and “All the Pretty Little Horses,” which have remained among the most beautiful albums ever produced by Current 93 and the entire genre over the years.

During these two nights, accompanying the good Tibet, are the musicians who most distinguished that superb artistic phase: I mention Michael Cashmore (guitar), Rose McDowall (vocals), Joolie Wood (violin), and Karl Blake (bass) among the most emblematic names. In short: a setlist full of immortal classics (which today it is prohibitive to hope for), the best possible lineup, a creatively speaking unrepeatable period: what more could one ask for? The sounds are not perfect, it's true, but they are good, more than decent enough to allow the tracks to break free from the chains imposed by the recording studio and to soar into the air rougher and more incisive than ever. The performance, too, is not flawless, but even in this case, the quality of the result is not compromised, since from a live album, essentially devoid of post-production tweaks, one can expect imperfections and smudges.

The only real note to make is that it all could have been collected on a single medium, as the two volumes have almost identical setlists: not a big deal, as the saying goes, "more is less," so why be upset if, in the end, we have two concerts instead of one, perhaps to be listened to at separate times?

Let's finally move on to the contents: Shirley Collins' archaic singing, as if it came from an old broken radio, draws the audience’s attention in the room; the tremulous voice of a child, Tibet's own daughter, introduces the event and shortly precedes the band's entrance on stage. Cashmore's guitar and Wood's piercing violin break through the sparse clapping, and it's already goosebumps. Tibet's live voice, the ungainly minstrel of the apocalypse, is also chilling, and the enchantment will last for over an hour. It's “In the Heart of the Wood” that is providentially called to open “Alpha”, the first volume, which, as we said, will barely differ from the other, obviously named “Omega”.

The folk jewels that characterize the "middle age" of Current 93's career are reproduced quite faithfully compared to the original versions, purged of electronic contaminations (the guru of dark electronics Steven Stapleton is, after all, absent), but revitalized by the interpretative verve of a David Tibet in a state of grace.

The tracks follow one another like in a multiple and continuous orgasm, from which classics such as “Song for Douglas After He's Dead” and “The Death of the Corn” soar in all their beauty, the latter even more beautiful than the original, embellished for the occasion by McDowall's poignant counterpoint. A sound flow that, interrupted from time to time by the enthusiastic applause of the enraptured audience (in religious silence during performances), manages to homogenize the various concepts that originally animated the albums. Apt, in this regard, is the sequential reproposition of “Dormition and Dominion”-“So: This Empire is Nothing”-“This Shining Shining World”, just as it happened on "Of Ruine of Some Blazing Starre": a concept within a concept, we could say, and this is just one example of how the whole gains coherence and is reborn to new life. For the rest, the setlists are well crafted, mostly gathering folk tracks and acoustic reinterpretations of pieces born under the sign of chaos (how not to mention in this regard the acoustic version of “Horsey”, which here takes on the form of an evocative ballad of over eight minutes, suggestive in its calmness and intense in its impetuous crescendos: a version that, even in this case, far surpasses the original electric triumph).

So if the “new” Current take center stage, pleasant excursions into the band's past will not be lacking, such as the tracks drawn from the seminal “Swastikas for Goddy” (the overwhelming “Oh Coal Black Smith”, the alienating nursery rhyme of the darkness “Black Flowers, Please”), or the various “Be”, “Happy Birthday Spooky Moonbeam”, and “The Blue Gates of Death”, among the first folk experiments carried out by the band in the late eighties, here re-interpreted in the light of increased expressive and execution maturity.

In both volumes, the real surprises are relegated to the so-called encores, where “Alpha” concludes with a furious “Lucifer Over London” (shortened of the final lilting tail, thus regenerated into two minutes of insane and visionary punk), while the farewell of “Omega” is entrusted even to the theme of the mystical “Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow”, a perfect expedient to bid farewell to the audience as the group exits the stage.

The mass is finished. Therefore, all that remains is to “dress up like Christ,” press play once more, and finally abandon ourselves to the spiritual fumes of Current in its most fascinating and refined form.

Alpha:

1. In the Heart of the Wood (And What I found There)

2. Calling for Vanishing Faces II

3. This Carnival is Dead and Gone

4. The Descent of Long Satan and Babylon

5. Black Flowers, Please

6. Be

7. All the World Makes Great Blood

8. The Great, Bloody and Bruised Veil of the World

9. A Song For Douglas After He's Dead

10. Horsey

11. Happy Birthday Spooky Moonbeam

12. Oh Coal Black Smith

13. Dormition and Dominion

14. So: This Empire is Nothing

15. This Shining Shining World

16. A Sadness Song

17. Lucifer Over London

Omega:

1. The Death of the Corn

2. Calling for Vanishing Faces I

3. Happy Birthday Peek-a-Moonbeam

4. Horsey

5. All the World Makes Great Blood

6. The Great, Bloody and Bruised Veil of the World

7. A Song For Douglas After He's Dead

8. Dormition and Dominion

9. So: This Empire is Nothing

10. This Shining Shining World

11. Oh Coal Black Smith

12. Black Flowers, Please

13. When the May Rain Comes

14. The Blue Gates of Death

15. In the Heart of the Wood (And What I found There)

16. A Sadness Song

17. Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow