REVIEW: Current 93 -- The Light is Leaving Us All (2018, The Spheres)

As we all know, Current 93 is a cult project, meaning that if you
know what it is all about, you are probably a devout follower and
stay tuned. If you don't give a shit, you are not in the loop, not
reading this review, and, well, don't give a shit. That is, there is no
middle ground. So, there is probably not much I can tell to those
who read even this far except a little story of how little it
takes to ruin an otherwise decent album.

Current 93 started of as a some sort of experimental outfit (in 1984
"Dog Blood Rising" did sound out-there). To stay experimental for
over three decades and a half one need to be have a substantial
amount of artistic craziness, which David Tibet does not. Otherwise
the creativity of a project inevitably reduces to exploiting on of the
number of successful formulas that one develops over decades of
activity.

I haven't followed Current 93 since mid-2000s and not aware of the
developments since "Black Ships Ate the Sky". However it seems that
the year of 2018 finds the project in the trench they dug in late
90s, sometime around "Soft Black Stars", that is, melancholic crooning
to largely acoustic backdrop with occasional slide guitar and assorted
percussive tinkery. David Tibet cannot sing in the common sense of
the term and instead utilizes a chant-like style with which he delivers
what is supposed to be a loosely joined array of sort of apocalyptic
images, many of which made their way into titles of his albums and songs.
This is a very delicate method which invokes corresponding atmosphere
when it works and turns into a blatant gibberish when it does not,
especially in cases where there isn't much of the instrumental cacophony
to hind this behind.

Unfortunately, this album exemplifies the latter case. The concept of
ultimate hopelessness of being and life's decay is a good candidate for
an apocalyptic imagery. Trying to maniacally ram it down into the center
of the listener's spine is not so. The line "The light is leaving us
all" is repeated several times in every fricken song that has lyrics,
except "The Kettle's On" (which perhaps was deemed so unstable that
it was wisely decided not to overload it). By the third track I grew
suspicious of the plot and started paying attention. Yep.
By the middle of the album it became annoying to the point that red
churches and dead kings lost all their menacing aura. By the time
the album delivered awfully profound statements like "If a man breaks
a bone of another man, his bone is broken" ("Fair weather"), the whole
affair began to sound downright comical. Following that, another
"The light is leaving us all" nearly made my day. Thanks, David, we
got the idea, let's move on.

You can form your own opinion of this album by listening to it yourself.