Review: Lisa Gerrard: The Black Opal

Gerrard Records

By: Dennis M. Kelly




There is something far different about the feeling I get prior to listening to a Lisa Gerrard album for the first time, unlike any other album. For example, I know her music is going to reach me on a deeper, more emotional and even a spiritual level, something that doesn’t happen too often with other artist’s albums. Lisa Gerrard has always been gifted from childhood with the ability to reach people on an emotional level with her voice and her skill unparalleled, even before seeking lessons.

Her days in the band, Dead Can Dance deepened that ability and enabled her to reach even more people than ever before. It was upon viewing a music video called “Lonely is an Eyesore” that I was first exposed to her amazing talent. I used the word exposed, because since that time, I’ve never been able to get enough of her voice and her music.

To describe her voice really is synonymous with describing the emotion it conveys as she seems to throw all technical concerns out the window and communicates her faith and her feelings through her own languages and also much more recently in English as well.

Since Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard has been working on collaborations, scoring soundtracks and releasing solo albums. Lisa had recently received the Australian Screen Music Award for Best Music Score for her soundtrack to Balibo. Lisa has now also released a re-mastered version of her Balibo album on the store of her site for fans as well as her collaboration with Klaus Schulze called Come Quietly which was available during their European tour in September this year.

Her last release, “The Silver Tree” (2007), saw her directing (for the first time) the video for “Come Tenderness” and this time around for her latest release “The Black Opal” (2009), she has created a video for the song “The Serpent & the Dove” with Josiah Brooks.

With the release of “The Black Opal” being available online (http://www.lisagerrard.com) in digital format as well as a standard and deluxe CD, that are made with recycled materials, it further demonstrates her world-minded forethought in helping the environment. The deluxe version contains the above mentioned, “The Serpent & the Dove” video, additional songs as well as pull out poems and additional artwork and images.

Speaking of images, I had been trying to piece together a meaning with the symbolism of the album cover, but was unsuccessful on my own. Thankfully, it was made known to me that the eye on the album is a dolphin’s eye and the blood is to symbolize the acts of cruelty that we are still inflicting on dolphins and many other creatures of the Earth. This is a topic that Lisa feels very strongly about and hopes will have a positive impact for people.

Upon the opening of the album, “Red Horizon” immerses its tones into your head, gradually filling the atmosphere of the album into your mind. If you allow it to, you can truly lose yourself in the timelessness of her work. It is this timelessness that is the strength of Lisa Gerrard’s sound, but in order to fully appreciate it, it is best to listen in a distraction free area, wherever that may be for you.

One of the most pleasant aspects to this album is more focus on perhaps one of the more basic and rudimentary of instruments, the piano. The instrument in itself is elegant and can be filled with its own emotional power and tonal resonance to satisfy most music listeners on its own. However, in the hands of Michael Edwards, and married with Lisa’s vocals, a truly magical moment is born. “The Messenger” reaches out of the subconscious and lends itself to dreamlike imagery and is the perfect evolution in Lisa Gerrard’s music. Where Brendan Perry and Lisa meshed with their blend of world music and reached back into the past, Michael and Lisa now reach out to the future, and it is vast.

Any long time fan of Lisa’s will truly appreciate this album. In a way, it has a feel of being a best of album, in that it is a best of all the different ranges and influences that Lisa’s music has spanned over the years. While most of the music is fresh for long time fans, there are attributes that are reminiscent of her previous works. This is one case where this is a good thing though. It encompasses elements of “The Mirror Pool” with some darker toned songs, some of the beauty and elegance of “Duality”, the serenity of “Immortal Memory” and growth and spirituality from “The Silver Tree”. Where the Silver Tree’s influences end, the material on “The Black Opal” expands and breaches into new territory and runs with it. Like a tree, deeply rooted and true to itself, Lisa stays focused on the core elements of herself and her sound. She demonstrates true, natural growth and redefines her own boundaries by applying her voice into new musical styles successfully.

Lisa has mentioned that she has been working on “a new dimension to her work” and has introduced some of those songs on tour both on the last Dead Can Dance tour and her tour for the “Silver Tree” album. Two of those songs are “Black Forest” and “Sleep” (originally called “Hymn for the Fallen”), “Black Forest” is by far, the strongest song on the album, in this reviewer’s opinion. Containing a sultry Jazz influence and sung in an impassioned English, Michael Edwards piano careening the motion of the song along. Slowly building with a deepening turbulence and swelling with an orchestral background, the phrase “you don’t love me” resounds its finality and hits the emotional mark. Then, with a sudden and sharp end, the silence between tracks becomes like a resonant echo left by the emotional impact of the song.

Following this song is perhaps the most surprising songs on the album, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”. Cover songs can be a double-edged sword for artists at times, but for Lisa Gerrard, the song is executed in a fresh and unique way that fans and listeners who are newly introduced to her music should be able to appreciate as well.

For anyone who has seen the film entitled “Sanctuary” (Milan Records), a film by Clive Collier about Lisa and her life through the words of herself, her friends, colleagues and even her parents, you were treated to a sampling of the music on this album too. A portion of the song called “Solace” was played while the video slowly moved through a forest, presumably near where Lisa resides. That image now sticks with me every time I hear the song and it is so fitting to the mood of the song indeed.

Another song featured on the “Sanctuary” film is a song called “Sleep” that was played in a piano-less and more orchestral form during the credits. It was also, as mentioned above, performed live, so those who have heard the song previously will be treated to hearing this in its studio form. It is a tender piano piece; a lullaby, if you will, and the perfect closing to an album marking a bold new chapter in the musical life of Lisa Gerrard. Don’t worry about defining the music that Lisa has put forth onto this album, let her music reach you and speak for itself as it is. And do not dismiss or pigeonhole her either, for she is and always will be an artist in the truest form, without definition.

Editors note: While we at Chicago Music Guide appreciate all aspects of music (light, dark and all in between), Lisa Gerrard has maintained a dark image of herself in her photos. We would like to express our personal approval on her latest photos (above) and feel it can be a big help in how people will perceive her as an artist. Great job Lisa!

BIOGRAPHY

"Music is a Place to take Refuge. It's a Sanctuary from Mediocrity and Boredom. It's Innocent and it's a Place you can loose yourself in Thoughts, Memories and Intricacies..." Lisa Gerrard.

Over a career that takes in almost two decades with Dead Can Dance, award-winning movie soundtracks and a series of acclaimed solo and collaborative albums, Lisa Gerrard has established herself as one of Australia's most ground-breaking and in-demand artists. Singer, composer and actress in El Nino de la Luna (a film which she also scored), Lisa brings a vision that is both precise and all-embracing to everything she does.

It is a musical journey that began in the early 1980s when she and fellow Australian Brendan Perry formed Dead Can Dance, one of the world's most original bands whose proud boast is that they never fitted into any neatly manufactured genre or predefined pigeonhole.

With Lisa's otherworldly voice counter-poised by Brendon's mellifluous tones, from the outset, they thought nothing of setting discordant electric guitars and dark, rolling bass lines against cellos, trombones and timpani.

Over nine albums between 1984 and 1995, the duo's musical canvas expanded with every release to take in a timeless mix of world music influences, medieval chants, folk ballads, baroque stylings, Celtic flavours, electronics, samples and anything else that took their fancy.

This mosaic of musical influences is perhaps less surprising in the light of Lisa's childhood in Melbourne, where she recalls Greek, Turkish and Irish melodies "oozing into the streets" of her neighbourhood.

Since then she lived in London, Spain and Ireland before returning to the Snowy Mountains of Australia.

In 1995 came her first solo album, The Mirror Pool on which she was accompanied by the Victoria Philharmonic Orchestra. Again, it's an album that defies categorisation, causing one impressed but perplexed reviewer to describe it as "ambient, orchestral, folk and new age all at the same time."

Duality, a collaboration with Pieter Bourke followed in 1998 and again transcended musical eras and genres. Next came the stunningly beautiful Immortal Memory, a collaboration with the Irish composer, Patrick Cassidy which further explores the boundaries of Lisa's musical ambition.

Her recent album, The Silver Tree, again shifted into new territory; an album in every way sentient and ethereal.

In recent years Lisa has also become a much sought-after composer of soundtracks. In many ways this has been a logical progression.

Much of the work of Dead Can Dance had a cinematic quality that led to the group's music being used in the cult movie Baraka, TV commercials and even a car chase scene in Miami Vice.

Among the many films and documentaries she has scored or contributed to are Gladiator, Insider, Whale Rider, Black Hawk Down, Heat, Ali, King Arthur, Tears Of The Sun, The Mist, Salem's Lot, A Thousand Roads, Ashes & Snow, Layer Cake, El Nino de la Luna, Balibo, Henry Poole Is Here, Solo, Playing For Charlie & Ichi.

Lisa has recieved Golden Globe nominations for Insider and Ali and Oscar Nominations for Gladiator and 4 International awards for Whale Rider.

In 2009, she founded her own record label, Gerrard Records, with the intent to empower and support unsigned, unrecognised artists the world over.

Breaking from the typical record label mold, Gerrard Records will seek to give artists the tools and resources to manage themselves, as well as acting to safeguard the rights and intellectual property of the artists it serves. Lisa's new studio album, The Black Opal, is set to be the label's first release.

Biography by Nick Comeau & James Orr

For more information about Lisa Gerrard, please visit her official website at: http://www.lisagerrard.com/

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