Dead Can Dance - Children Of The Sun

Anastasis: the Greek word for resurrection. Before you even press play, you've understood three things about Dead Can Dance's first album in 16 years: it's erudite, portentous in its introspection, and finds a band whose back catalogue is a kind of musical world tour swimming around in the Aegean sea. Actually, the most exquisite music here could beAnatolian: it feels more ancient than modern, equally Turkish and Greek. On Anabasis (a word denoting journeys), Lisa Gerrard's voice wisps and curls like smoke from a hookah; on Kiko she wails like a high priestess over drums that suggest a march to a sacrifice and a rembetika riff. Best of all is Agape (love), whose melodramatically keening violin line reeks of the port of old Smyrna. Add Brendan Perry singing of memory and restless spirits in a voice so deep it seems to come from the foundations of buried temples, and this album could be hypnotic – if only it plodded less and soared more.