Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
Showing posts with label Dirty Three. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dirty Three. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Monday, October 2, 2017
Mark Kozelek with Ben Boye and Jim White
Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/10/02/mark-kozelek-with-ben-boye-and-jim-white-album-review/
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Album Review: Dirty Three - Cinder
Dirty Three's seventh album, released in 2005, is a change from previous albums. The songs are shorter and more plentiful (nineteen tracks!), and are less dominated by Warren Ellis' violin. Rather it fits into the overall sound. Two tracks even feature vocals, but more of that later. Ever Since sets the tone for the album, an almost Morricone, Western feel with Ellis playing less manically but with grace and subtlety. She Passed Through and Amy drift by very pleasantly before Sad S€xy picks up the tempo a little. Mick Turner's guitar is perfectly pitched as Ellis' violin grows in intensity throughout the track.
Cinders' rattling guitars break the momentum a little, but the sprightly The Zither Player brings the album back on track. It Happened and Too Soon, Too Late have a lazy, on horseback feel, almost like Calexico, while the spooky Great Waves features Cat Power on almost hypnotic vocals, which work pretty well. Later, Sally Timms of the Mekons performs wordless vocals on Feral, while mixing it up further, Warren Ellis puts down the violin for elegiac piano on Last Dance.
So a fairly atypical Dirty Three album then, but a most enjoyable one.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Album Review: Dirty Three
Dirty Three's self-titled second album, released in 1995, opens with an absolute epic, the 10 minute blaster Indian Love Song. It's fairly atypical in that it's less reliant on Warren Ellis' violin, instead providing a showcase for some serious guitar work by Mick Turner.
Following a peak like this is not easy. Better Go Home Now is a gloriously heavy guitar and violin workout, all done in less than 4 minutes! Odd Couple is moodier, Ellis swapping violin for accordion. Kim's Dirt is the centrepiece, a long, almost ambient, trance-like piece where not an awful lot happens.
After the violin swoops and squalls of Everything's F**ked, The Last Night saddles up with harmonica and heads off to the dusky outback before the final track, the blood and thunder of Dirty Equation, where the band really cut loose. It's stuffed full of pounding drums, frenzied guitar and crazed violin and is utterly brilliant. This album is definitely a good place to start with this band.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Least worst 20 albums of 2012
No point in
waiting any longer. I’ve decided to do a
top 20 this year of the least worst albums of 2012:
20 Lee Ranaldo
– Between the Times and the Tides
19 Paul
Buchanan – Mid Air
18 I Like
Trains – The Shallows
17 Leonard
Cohen – Old Ideas
16 Peter
Broderick – www.itstartshear.com
15 Earth –
Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II
14 Bob Mould –
Silver Age
13 The
Soulsavers – The Light, The Dead See
12 Seti the
First – Melting Cavalry
11
Tindersticks – The Something Rain
10 RM Hubbert
– Thirteen Lost & Found
Scotland’s
most accomplished guitarist turns in a stellar follow up to First & Last.
9 Dinosaur Jr
– I Bet On Sky
J Mascis can
still churn out the heavy riffs like nobody else.
8 Sun Kil Moon
– Among the Leaves
A Mark Kozelek
private joke? Possibly. He’s still a damn good guitarist.
7 Dirty Three
– Toward the Low Sun
Epic comeback
album from the Aussie rockers.
6 Dakota Suite
– An Almost Silent Life
A more varied
release than usual for Dakota Suite…
5 Mark Eitzel
– Don’t Be A Stranger
This album
sounds like nothing special at first, but it’s quite an addictive collection of
songs, from the most enjoyable whiner in music today.
4 Neil Young
& Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill
In Driftin’
Back this album has one of the tracks of the year and definitely the longest.
3 Mark Lanegan
Band – Blues Funeral
A strong
collection of songs from the uber-serious Lanegan.
2 Caught In
The Wake Forever – Against A Simple Wooden Cross
Not an easy
listen. But what an album. Debut album of the year.
1 The Twilight
Sad – No One Can Ever Know
This should
have been a wrong move, but the electronic-tinged material is brilliantly
cold. Now if they could just find
directions to Ireland…
Monday, September 3, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Album Review: Low + Dirty Three – In The Fishtank 7
Low were in a
particularly fertile phase creatively in 2001, and combining with violin based
instrumentalists Dirty Three seemed like an inspired move.
I Hear…
Goodnight sounds like a fairly standard Low track, albeit backed with violin,
but their version of Neil Young’s Down By The River is the centerpiece. It builds up very slowly, over half of the 10
minute duration elapses before the Mimi Parker sung melody is heard. She takes an already dark song and makes it
darker still, the unconventional treatment making it seem almost sinister.
Dirty Three’s
violins combine well with Parker and Alan Sparhawk duet Invitation Day, while
When I Called Upon Your Seed is almost gospel, sounding almost completely like
a Low track.
The
instrumental Cody on the other hand sounds like a Dirty Three track before the
sitting-on-the-porch-rollicking-blues of Lordy brings things to a close. It’s a barnstorming track, quite unlike
anything in either band’s catalogues.
There is
plenty here for fans of either band to get stuck into.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Album Review: Dirty Three – Horse Stories
Dirty Three are an Australian instrumental trio, featuring Warren Ellis’ at times unhinged violin playing ably supported by the tasteful guitar of Mick Turner and Jim White on drums.
This album, released in 1996 was their third, and is a real mood piece. After the tranquil opener, 1000 Miles, Sue’s Last Ride is an early highlight. Building up from Turner’s gentle guitar part, the music has plenty of space in it for Ellis’ violin to rampage through the song, quickening throughout the piece. Hope is more downbeat with hints of Arab Strap’s instrumentation in the guitars, but I Remember A Time When You Used To Love Me is a rollicking, sway-along romp, and the first indication that the band is capable of rocking out.
At The Bar sees the pace slacken once again before the furious rocker Red, which eschews subtlety from the start in place of pounding drums, bashed guitars and demented violin from Ellis at its core, and doesn’t let up.
Warren’s Lament is surely the centerpiece, it’s like a microcosm of everything Dirty Three do over the course of eight and half minutes, with an especially lonesome violin part. It finishes with the somber, funereal I Knew It Would Come To This, with Ellis’ violin appearing to reference The Smiths at one point.
A whole album of violin playing takes some getting used to but for those who enjoy instrumental music in the Mogwai vein, this should be investigated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)