The names of collaborators in the liner notes give a good hint on what we can expect from this release: The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave himself, Einsturzende Neubauten. In addition to the 9 new tracks, the CD contains 4 songs that formed an EP titled "Dirty Sings", and one song recorded in '82. Mick Harvey from The Bad Seeds produced most of the tracks and co-wrote many songs with Anita Lane. Dirty (her alias) is Australian, but moved from Melbourne to Berlin more than a decade ago.
As can be expected from the influences, this is music that glooms in the dark, slow and almost hypnotic. The lyrics paint pictures of dreams, love, sex, religion and death. Dirty's voice may be thin, but it's always erotic, whether she's singing at high pitch or in a whispering style. Highlight tracks are a cover of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing", creating a completely different song and "Subterranean World" a fabulous duet with Blixa Bargeld, a sweet and sour love song. "The Fullness Of His Coming", a collaboration with The Birthday Party from '82 that hadn't been released so far, shows a harder edge. "The World's A Girl" was an obvious choice as a single, it's the most radio-friendly track on the album (the single also contains a cover of "Je t'aime - moi non plus", an English version in a duet with Nick Cave). Many of the other album tracks don't have a traditional verse/chorus song structure, the vocals just float along carried by keyboard sounds, atmospheric and addictive.
Comparisons are really not appropriate for such original work, but if you absolutely need one, there's some similarity to the slower tracks of Siouxsie. This album will hardly create huge sales; it's "alternative" in the original, positive sense of the word. But Dirty has the potential to create a cult following, anybody looking for interesting adventures off the beaten tracks can find a real (Dirty) Pearl here.
