Sometimes a musician creates a sound so distinct and powerful that its audience would prefer he or she not tamper with it. That can lead to stagnation. Throughout their 16-year career, vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, better known as Dead Can Dance, have created spiritual music drawn from a variety of influences: classical, medieval, choral, ethnic, rock. But recently the group's fire seemed to be dying down -- as if they'd played out the possibilities of their self-created genre.

Well, the new Spiritchaser shows a new maturity in the duo. Perhaps Gerrard's more orchestral 1995 solo outing on 4AD, The Mirror Pool (and its subsequent world tour), helped unleash some of the potential that was missing in her work with Perry. Spiritchaser is practically bereft of the straight-ahead rock rhythms that permeated so many previous songs. Whether it was a harpsichord, drum, or guitar, one instrument would often simplify the musical equations, complementing but sometimes compromising the exotic atmospheres the group created. If Gerrard's audience in concert here last year was any indication (from the looks of it, one half Symphony Hall patrons, the other half Man Ray clubgoers), she has some appreciative, diverse, sophisticated listeners.

Recorded at Quivvy Church in County Cavan, Ireland (which is also Perry's home), Spiritchaser is the group's first studio outing in nearly three years and one of their best, alongside 1990's medieval-influenced Aion. It sounds like a group effort, whereas 1993's Into the Labyrinth often felt like the work of two individuals who worked on each other's material.

The opening "Niereka" begins with an air-cutting bullroar; it's followed by African-flavored rhythms pounded out on hand percussion, lush synths drifting in the background, and multi-tracked chants supporting the rare experience of hearing Gerrard and Perry singing together. (It's a fetching, Africanized call-and-response chant backed by medieval drones.) The shared vocal responsibilities continue throughout the album, as if to reinforce the new direction DCD are heading in. In the past, their material was clearly split between Gerrard songs and Perry songs: the operatic Gerrard did the polyrhythmic numbers, the more languid Perry handled the smoother, rock-oriented songs. This time out, the two styles meld. In fact, Gerrard sings on the album's closing "Devorzhum," the kind of slow-moving ethereal trance number on which you'd have expected to hear Perry.

Throughout Gerrard and Perry call on different cultures for inspiration. You could call this world fusion except that each song draws from a particular culture while flavoring it with exotic spicings. Each piece provides its own memorable motif: the soukous-like guitar line of "The Snake and the Moon," the gamelan-like bell tones and exotic winds within "Song of the Nile," the Turkish clarinet on "Indus." What elevates the music from being yet another half-assed '90s hybrid is the spirituality that Dead Can Dance have always tapped into on their albums, whether it was medieval, Middle Eastern, or Celtic.

Perry evidently has been absorbing plenty of South American music lately, and it shows, particularly on the folky "Song of the Dispossessed," a quiet number defined by its languid Spanish guitar, lightly bouncing congas, and morose synth horns. Perry's lounge-like vocal qualities work well here over the samba beat; this number should refute those Gerrard partisans who have criticized his Sinatra-like inflections as out of place in the band.

DCD have gone through a number of phases: the gothic rock of their full-length, homonymous debut, the medieval explorations of most of their subsequent albums, the Celtic leanings of their last studio release, and this newer turn toward world-music exploration. With Spiritchaser Perry and Gerrard appear to have rekindled their musical fire. There may yet be more surprises in store from them -- and for us.