In the intervening period Tibet has settled accounts with his ex-wife, found new love, and here appears more strident as he intones the latest configuration of his ever evolving mix of cod-prophetic and eclectic theology. The number of collaborators, thankfully pared down on the previous two albums, are back centre stage with mixed results. The most prominent addition to the line up is Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt whose credentials include collaborations with such avant-garde luminaries as John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Luc Ferrari. His jazz tinged playing is ever present and adds an immediate sense of quality to the ensemble even when at times the composition underwhelms. East Village mystic John Zorn lends his squawking alto to a couple of tracks, most successfully on Those Flowers Grew where his playing increases in wildness along with Tibet's delivery.
 
While Van Houdt's piano is quality throughout it dominates to the detriment of the other players. Jon Seagroatt's clarinet and flute are sadly underused and the guitars of Groundhogs legends Tony McPhee appear seemingly as an afterthought. The peak of their contribution is the swirling psychedelia of The Heart Full of Eyes where they dual with each other in a slow motion dance of death behind Tibet's increasingly incomprehensible prophetic. Antony Hegarty takes over vocal duties on the solo piano led Mourned Winter Then. Now I love Antony's voice but it really doesn't suit Tibet's logorrheic lyrics. At times Hegarty seems almost out of breath trying to keep up with the churned imagery of muddy towers, SunBabies, and ForgetMeNot's. Anyone who has heard Antony's rendering of Edgar Allan Poe's The Lake will know what he can do with a well crafted verse; but here straining against the verbosity of Tibet's words his talents are not well used.
 
The pace of the album is fairly consistent throughout. An exception to this is I Remember the Berlin Boys which has a cheerier almost vaudeville mood over which the fog of Tibet's lyrics disperse enough to reveal him ruminating on past relationships and the coming of age; "I loved to dance with ants, when I was young in body, but old in soul, now older and in vice". I've always found his lyrics most interesting when he focuses on mundane and universal themes like these. As much as I enjoy the prophetic and surreal imagery that run through his writing it is extremely anachronistic and I have never detected a coherent theology in any of it. Magpie spiritualism would be a good description for what Tibet does. A bit of Buddhism, a bit of Crowley, a pinch of Hermeticism or Gnostic Christianity, throw in a few contemporary references and there you have it. Perhaps the best signpost for the album's core theme is in the title. It is taken from a verse by the 19th century English working class poet John Clare. Nature, childhood in an idyllic country setting, and feelings of loss and self-alienation amid the changing world are Clare's preoccupations. They have also at one time or another been Tibet's. The latter has in particular been foremost in Current 93's recent output. The death of friends  (most recently Sebastian Horsley and Peter Christopherson), marriage, divorce, disappointment, aging, the whole inevitable flux of life which we all must face, these are things which Tibet writes well about when he holds back on cloaking them entirely in his latest theological interest or "vision". Sadly we only get glimpses of the human being on this record, much of it is otherworldly to the point of losing interest.
 
Nick Cave handles the vocals on the final track I Could Not Shift the Shadow and this is perhaps the album's most personal and attractive moment. The piano playing is simplified compared to the previous songs and will have fans immediately recalling the most introspective moments on Soft Black Stars. Tibet's lyrics, full of regret and questioning, are addressed to some unnamed person: "Then did you scent the wind drop, and count the codes of seeds? And did you call the night "bright", and drink the sex of stars?...Your breath flickered next to my breath". Who he's addressing is not clear, but the all too human sentiments of loss and what might have been are written large.
 
I am the Last of All the Field that Fell is musically one of the band's most consistent and professional sounding works of the last ten years, but it's also surprisingly one of the least interesting. There's a plodding hesitancy on many of the songs and an unwillingness to allow some of the collaborators their own space for expression. As we've seen, Tibet's performance, centre stage as usual, brims with obscurity (there are instances of Greek, Coptic and Hebrew in the text) but at the expense of substantial emotional engagement. Without this Current 93 look and sound less interesting.