SPIRITCHASER

Dead Can Dance's final album sees the band steering in a heavily world music direction, and they seem particularly keen on appropriating Australian aboriginal music and fusing them with elements of Western rock music. The end results, I fear, are sometimes unconvincing - Song of the Stars mixes a repetitive drum rhythm with some rather uninspired guitar noodling and backing singing which wouldn't be out of place on any New Agey world music album out there, and at many points the distinctive sound of the band disappears in favour of a sound reminiscent of Peter Gabriel off-cuts from the Passion period.

That said, Devorzhum and other tracks (largely the Lisa Gerrard-heavy ones) do bring back echoes of a more glorious past, and it's not a total mess - in fact, much of it is quite listenable. But it's not a patch on their earlier stuff, and it makes sense that they went onto a long hiatus after this.