Dead Can Dance
The Serpent's Egg

THE REVIEW

Few times have I cried listening to an album, a song; few times have I felt my body vibrate with immense joy and divine pleasure, struck by a sweet orgasm of the senses. I cried when Lou Reed, whose voice usually thunders hard and indifferent, showed the first touching signs of weakness when in "Heroin" he surrendered to the drug with an exasperated and unsettling laugh: I have made a big decision/ I gonna try to nullify my life... It's my wife, it's my life, ah-ah And you felt like shouting, screaming with all your might: fight, Lou, come on, FIGHT!!! I cried, then, when I first heard "Atrocity Exhibition", when Ian Curtis obsessively and continuously repeated This is the way: step inside, this is the way: step inside... - and keep in mind that at the time I didn't know the whole story, meaning his tragic end that everyone now knows. I cried, then, when Captain Beefheart in "Trout Mask Replica" indulged in numerous gargles and insane howls, or when Fraser's candid and smirking little voice chirped nonsensical and joyful verses in "Caroline's Fingers", or again when Nico displayed her solemnity and firm voice in "All Tomorrow's Parties".
Finally, I cried when I listened to "The Serpent's Egg", here more than any other.

This is my favorite album by the timeless Dead Can Dance. The real reasons? I don't know, maybe the warm and feverish melodies of Lisa in "The Host of Seraphim or in "The Writing of My Father's Hand" or again in "Orbis de Ignis", where I felt an almost sacred calm, or for Brendan's warm and dreamy voice in the surreal "Severance" or in "Ulyses", a superb ballad. But the true reason is that only here did I feel that shiver, that thrill, that emotion where all the joys of this world burst forth in a giant explosion of light. Beyond this, I can't tell you more, I'm sorry.

I could have also here, as I usually do, thrown a bunch of dates, anecdotes, and coldly examined each song one by one like "This one is beautiful, this one is not, this one is so-so...", but I couldn't, because "The Serpent's Egg" is a single piece, a single celestial work of Art where emotions and sounds intertwine into a single, unified thing. There's nothing else to say, except this: try listening to it and then answer this simple question: did you cry?