The Birthday Party: Prayers on Fire : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Take an orchestra and a chorus, throw in Alanis Morissette, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Perry Farrell along with world-music luminaries Salif Keita, Ofra Haza, Yungchen Lhamo and the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and what have you got? The Prayer Cycle, soundtrack composer Jonathan Elias' nine-movement devotional suite, excerpts of which are featured on the ABC News documentary series The Century.

Given popdom's current penchant for yoga and spiritual exotica, together with the classical world's recent rediscovery of Gregorian chants, this project is a premillennial no-brainer. Taking the "We Are the World" concept to a literal level, Morissette sings in French and Hungarian, Ronstadt in Spanish, Haza in Hebrew, Lhamo in Tibetan and Khan in Urdu - over choruses in Swahili, Latin, Italian, French and German. The music, however, is strictly from Hollywood. Elias rounds up the usual symphonic subjects - Stravinsky, Barber, Copland, Ravel - to fashion a melodramatic score that swells to one heart-rending climax after another.

With little to distinguish one grandiose melody from the next, the focus is squarely on the singers. Morissette and Ronstadt, soaring to semioperatic heights, hold up remarkably well in their respective duets with Mali's Keita and Pakistan's Khan. But the volcanic tenors ineluctably steal the show; even Israeli diva Haza can't match Khan's raw power on their landmark duet, "Forgiveness." Farrell, chanting wordlessly, does a passable Sting impression, while Taylor - delivering lines like, "Father won't you carry me, for my boat is so small," on the album's only English-language song - makes a strong case for foreign lyrics. (RS 809)

LARRY BIRNBAUM