She Has No Strings Apollo

It’s hard to believe that the mercurial Dirty Three have been fashioning their astonishing instrumental troubadour sound for a decade. Apollo mightn’t have strings, but Warren Ellis most certainly does. And here he is again, magnificently plucking at our heartstrings with his dazzling violin for a wonderful sixth record.

Ellis and his Dirty cohorts Mick Turner and Jim White have moonlighted as part time Bad Seeds, acted as a surrogate extra-curricular Nick Cave backing band and collaborated with Low. Warren’s trademark free-form melodic ebb and flow, has mesmerised live audiences and home listeners alike, especially on this record’s predecessor Whatever You Love, You Are.

She Has No Strings Apollo opens with the succulent slow surge of Ellis’ bow graced with his remarkable midas touch, complimented by gentle pizziacato and the soft twanging of Turner’s guitar on ‘Alice Wading’.

Ellis’ excellence soars throughout the record. One cannot box his playing style under any classical, tradition or folk tags, a classic characteristic he shares with the great contemporary Irish violinist Martin Hayes. Jim White, meanwhile, punctuates the proceeding with a light free jazz-like touch.

She Has No Strings Apollo is positively dripping with a thrilling live feel, leaping out of the speakers to enthrall the room. In the words of Nick Cave (when interrogating duende in contemporary music in his Secret History of the Love Song lecture), “my friends the Dirty 3 have it by the bucketload.” Damn right.