How do you I write about a band who doesn't have lyrics, or a singer and plays instrumental music? Well, I don't know how to write and spell so it should be easy, shouldn't it? I was diagnosed with dyslexia but I did finish year 10 high school with pretty basic English skills. The last few years I've had a writing tutor to help me but that has finished now so this is the first real one by myself but I know I'll have to get someone to edit it a bit after.
After High School ended badly, I hung out in the small town I grew up in for a little while but moved to the city as soon as I could. To Perth where I was born, so it felt like I was coming home. Since about the age of 16 I was taking six hour bus rides to the city to see gigs & concerts and get a CD or two because I couldn't get anything back where I lived.
I'm a 90's kid so everything is on CD. People have forgotten or just never known how hard it was pre-internet or post-Nirvana breaking the mainstream but maybe it was just me living at the arse end of the world.
The first night in the big city (it's really not that big). After unpacking I was going out and that night was one of those life changing moments not for the band I was planning on seeing but the support band stealing the show and destroying everything I thought about music. It was of course the Dirty Three and how do I sum it up? It's like when you see a nuclear bomb wipe away everything in it's path on the TV. The way it started was the most unlikely way to start a gig and the band members didn't even look like roadies, let alone musicians. Who I thought was the singer started talking and talking about it being their first time in Perth and wouldn't shut-up while the other two - one with his guitar and the other behind the drum kit looked on totally bored. After giving the longest ever introduction speech by a support band they started to play. The tracks seemed to go for half an hour each like time slowed down for them but most likely they were ten minutes, give or take. The pub wasn't even half full and most people were around the bar or pool tables missing who were going to become one of the greatest bands of the 90's. I got the self-titled debut album Dirty Three at the front door so it must have been early to mid-90's. I would still call Dirty Three the greatest live band I've ever seen and I've seen every show they have played here in the western capital.
I could have chosen that debut album but I think it would be runner-up to Whatever You Love, You Are as my favorite and most beloved Dirty Three album, I could listen to it forever. It was released in early 2000 but recorded in July 99. Making it the first "Classic" album of the 2000's and the fourth in a row of a great run of albums. Starting with that debut self-titled album then the recorded over-seas trilogy of Horse Stories, Ocean Songs and Whatever. I'm not counting Sad & Dangerous because it's basically home recorded demos. Everything changed for Dirty Three after the Whatever album so She Has No Strings Apollo and Cinder both have their great moments but less consistent as albums. Cinder sometimes wins out because of shear volume of songs, nineteen in all plus Cat Power's Chan Marshall singing the first ever lyrical vocal on a Dirty Three album. Ocean Songs also has been picked out of the batch of albums for the Don't Look Back concert series and I can understand why some people like it better. Made with "Don't call me a producer" Steve Albini and in the U.S.A., Aussies love it when bands go to American to made albums and Americans love to have them there too. It's quieter and nicer and easier album to get into and adding the piano helps with that too. It could be called the saddest album too. Did you know Dirty Three were in the recording studio when news bloke that Princess Diana died in a car crash?
But I think Whatever You Love, You Are is by far the better album. The leader and violinist Warren Ellis said the band gave up trying to have hit album after Ocean Songs and with that I think they got to their plateau with this album by letting them go to the next level. I do admit it's a hard record to get into but it's very rewarding if you do. It's so much more epic and extreme with all the lengths of the songs going beyond the five minute mark. The shortest track is just over six minutes "Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know" and the first two tracks at six minutes plus "Some Summers They Drop Like Flys" and "I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night". The last two tracks going up to the seven and half minutes. "Stellar" and "Lullabye for Christie". "I Offered It up to the Stars & The Night Sky" almost reaching an unbelievable fourteen minutes. As you can tell even the song titles are vast and elephantine. Only six songs would normally be an E.P. but the total time just drops short of fifty minutes. Ellis playing with his new toy, an effects pedal which adds on top of one another until it sounds like a symphony of crazy fiddle players. The first time I saw them play these songs he continued adding until it sounded something like standing next to a jumbo jet taking off with half the crowd putting their fingers in their ears to block the feedback out and a couple leaving as fast as they could run out the door.
Joe Mckee of Aussie band Snowman called Whatever "The most visually evocative Australian record ever ". With the guitarist who does all the painting for the album covers. Mick Turner's "Landscape" painting of Melbourne jetty and beach, the only real or non-abstract album artwork on a Dirty Three cover.
This is second album to be recorded in England, this time it was on the banks of the Thames. In a studio which was build by The Who's Pete Townshend but at the time of recording was owned by Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie. Would it sound odd to say if The Who and Cocteau Twins somehow could have a lovechild it might be like Dirty Three's Whatever You Love, You Are. There were two tracks recorded at the same time but which were only available for sale at their shows and tours on Lowlands album. The two songs are "Cottonhead" and "Three Mile Creek" which would have taken it up to eight tracks which would be closer to a normal amount on most albums at the time. It would have taken the album up to sixty minutes but I for one am glad these two were left off, they wouldn't work with the rest.
"It kills me that album" is what Will Oldham aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy said on the Dirty Three Documentary and Mick Harvey added "Whatever could be even better than Ocean Songs" which leads me into the last bit of this blog. Warren Ellis said in Perth at the beginning of this year that it would be the last time they play the Ocean Songs album in Don't Look Back concert series so why not do Whatever You Love, You Are album with the Don't Look Back concert series next? It's the ten year anniversary this year too and since that show here in Perth they haven't done one show. It doesn't seem like we are ever going to get a new album with Ellis joking they finished their new album and "it's a dance music record this time". I'm hoping they continue as a live band, he did say "see you next time". Warren Ellis apparently didn't want to do the Ocean Songs shows but Mick Turner and Jim White out voted him and talked him into doing it, so the story goes.
Maybe I'm wishing for something that is not ever going to happen but I wouldn't be the only one who would love to see Whatever album played in full in the next couple of years. Then again I really can't see them doing anything with the three member on different sides of the world. Ellis in Paris, White in New York and Turner the only one in Melbourne. Ellis has become Nick Cave's "side-kick" White playing drums for everyone from PJ Harvey, Cat Power, Nina Nastasia, Marianne Faithfull, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy etc. Turner doing his paintings and solo shows too, playing lately with Jeff Wegener which is funnily Jim White's favorite drummer of all-time. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis' first soundtrack together came out just after Cinder and included a couple of tracks with White and Turner. Now it's been over five years since that last Dirty Three album. It's a bit unfair calling them a nostalgia act just yet but surely one or two months in the next couple years or so could be put aside and made into a Whatever You Love, You Are album played in its entirety tour, a part of the Don't Look Back concert series.
Anyway it's most likely wishful thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if Dirty Three never played live again but who knows maybe they're are working on a comeback album. There was no promo video clips for this album, not that they made it on to MTV before. I did find someone uploaded a live version of "Some Summers They Drop Like Flys" to youtube taken from the bonus VCD on the Taiwan edition of Whatever. Ellis introduces this song sometimes as being "about coming home to find everyone he knows has gone and died."
Dirty Three's Whatever You Love, You Are track listing
1. Some Summers They Drop Like Flies – 6:20
2. I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night – 6:52
3. I Offered It Up to the Stars and the Night Sky – 13:40
4. Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know – 6:08
5. Stellar – 7:30
6. Lullabye for Christie – 7:46
The end.
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