Dirty Three – Love Changes Everything – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

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.

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.

Album Review: Dirty Three | Toward the Low Sun

Review for www.meg.ie http://www.meg.ie/dirty-three-toward-the-low-sun/

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.