This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Call it Dancing With Himself.
After a 16-year musical partnership, Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry disbanded last year. Now, hot on the heels of Gerrard’s acclaimed soundtrack album to The Insider, Perry has returned with his first solo CD. Fans of DCD won’t feel lost; although Eye Of The Hunter is a more stripped-down affair, eschewing lush arrangments and instrumentation for simple folk balladry, it still has the same gloomy atmosphere, glacial landscapes and rich sound of his previous work. The biggest change by far, of course, is the vocals: With Perry’s unpolished baritone front and centre, Eye Of The Hunter packs all the maudlin gloom of Gordon Lightfoot gone goth. It works wonders with a cover of Tim Buckley’s I Must Have Been Blind; next time, I’d love to hear what he could do with Sundown.
