Dirty Three ★★★
Love Changes Everything
BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP
Warren Ellis’s instrumental trio, extemporising freely after 12 years away.
When Ellis’s commitments as Nick Cave’s wingman deepened both within the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, and as a two-man film-scoring unit, it was perhaps inevitable that The Dirty Three – the horse he rode in on – would be put out to pasture. In its initial lifespan, huge, volatile, three-way compositions, boiled down from hours of jamming together, reached an accessibility zenith with 2005’s Cinder. As the members scattered across three continents and recordings became fewer and further between, Toward The Low Sun (2012) felt more like raw improv, and so it is here, across six simmering movements. The first launches an intensifying scuzz-rock groove, before jarringly splicing straight into the second’s opposing sound-world of meditative cyclical piano chords, puttering beats and desolate FX. The remaining four feel somewhat like Necks-y exercises in filling the tabula rasa on the fly, with value-added viola. Ultimately, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they’ve scaled greater heights with more time and pre-writing.