My copy of Black Ships Ate the Sky finally arrived from Strange Fortune yesterday. Now I used to absolutely love Current 93, but in recent years haven't found myself listening to them very much. Oh, every now and then I'd throw on All the Pretty Little Horses or Thunder Perfect Mind, and I'd play the tracks when they came up in shuffle mode, but my tastes have been veering away from the old World Serpent sound into more indie and alt-country fields. (And let's not even discuss my abandonment of goth or industrial bands.)So anyway, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I was eagerly looking forward to this album four years ago, especially when reading reports of duets with Marc Almond and other artists. But then time just seemed to drag on and on. An endless supply of live albums and compilations were released, and I think they now outnumber actual Current 93 albums. I saw him play in Toronto with Six Organs of Admittance and Simon Finn, but still no new album. The messages on David Tibet's mailing list got stranger and stranger, and I really believed the album would never appear. But now it exists and I have it in a tangible form.First off, the packaging is wonderful. It comes in a hard cardboard case, with a digipak inside holding the CD and a large, separate lyric and photo book on heavy stock paper. Now I've only listened to it once, but my snap judgment is that this may well be a return to the Thunder Perfect Mind form. The songs are more varied than in "recent" releases like Sleep Has His House, and the album is quite long and textured. Every few tracks there's the recurring song "Idumaea", but each time a different interpretation by a different vocalist. There's the hauntingly beautiful version by Marc Almond, the raspy rendition by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, a warbling Antony, and a final version by Shirley Collins.Like Thunder Perfect Mind, it's very much a collaborative album. Steven Stapleton's influence is very present, and half of the album features Michael Cashmore and the other half Ben Chasny - both to good effect. I'll definitely be listening to this some more, but so far I can't find any faults with Black Ships Ate the Sky. Let's hope it doesn't take another four years to hear more new Current 93.