It's no secret that I absolutely love Brendan Perry's work. In fact, while Lisa Gerrard usually gets most of the attention with the later part of Dead Can Dance's work, I personally always marveled at Perry's contributions and they tend to be my favorite. "Eye of the Hunter", what I believe is his first "real" solo album, is in short a complete masterpiece for anyone who enjoys very mellow mood music.
The story of this album for me is that a very good friend of a friend purchased this album for another friend of mine at the time, or so I believe that's how it came about. This particular friend was much more into dance and uppity music, and one day at lunch he popped this into his vehicle's CD player. At the time, I really wasn't a fan of DCD except for the live video of which I had watched a couple of times. I recall that when he put this album on, it was like time stopped, meaning the music was so incredibly slow and mellow that it didn't fit the lunch mood or really my friend's personality at all. It felt completely and absurdly out of place on all fronts.
I think my immediate reaction was something like, "um...great acquisition, buddy", in total sarcasm. Of course, the CD kept playing and I thought for sure it would pick up the pace a bit. Well, it didn't, and in fact it got slower. I think my friend turned the album off after about 3 songs. I didn't give it much more thought until probably a week later when, for some very odd reason, I was being haunted by the overall sound of the album, especially Perry's very strong vocals.
Since it was the very early days of Amazon, I decided to spring for the $15 price tag and got it promptly delivered to my home. I mildly thought I had lost my mind but upen receiving it and listening to it in my headphones at work, I realized that I had awkwardly stumbled upon one of those extremely rare gems that no one else really knows about. And, that's where my love affair for this album and DCD's work really started.
Just to be clear (again), "Eye of the Hunter" is really super slow in pace so it's definitely for a very particular audience. However, there's just something about the mood, feel, and definite sound of Perry's vocals and guitar, with its simplistic production, that makes this a nearly unforgettable album. In fact, I'm very sure that I've listened to this album way more times than any DCD release. Standout's are the title track, the very DCD like "Medusa" with it's wonderful refrain, "Sloth" for it's overall folky sound and haunting lyric, but the real gem is a cover of Jeff Buckley's "I Must Have Been Blind" which is purely sublime. It's one of those albums, like I said, that's perfect in every manner in the hands of the right listener.
I was extremely fortunate to see Perry live solo at the Metro in Chicago during the "Ark" tour, in fact I traveled all the way there just for the show. I don't believe he played anything off of this album which was a mild disappointment, but I think he played most of the "Ark" record, which is another great album but with a completely opposite mood. I will say that this performance was one of the most memorable "gift" shows that I saw during that era. Seeing him in a small club and having him be able to play whatever he wanted to play was just fantastic, a true gift for anyone that was there. The Metro also has a great vibe which only added to the show.
If the description of this album piques any interest at all, I highly encourage checking it out. It's definitely on my irreplaceable list and I even own 2 copies of it, now that they just rereleased it with a bonus live disc.
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