“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” Dolly Parton once said. “It takes a lot of skill to play this sloppily,” Dirty Three might say, because their oeuvre is basically the sound of beautiful arrangements collapsing.
As a rule the trio circle the obvious arrangements but never land on them. Warren Ellis bows slow and pretty melody lines from his violin, Mick Turner plucks deliberately primitive guitar arpeggios and Jim White’s drum lines flail like they were destined for a totally different song. The end result, in tracks like ‘Furnace Skies’ and ‘Rising Below’, is a rhythmical dissonance that is far more satisfying and evocative than the arrangements my brain anticipates (I suspect it’s the same logic that makes slightly crumbling buildings seem more beautiful than pristine ones).
The level of musical entropy varies from track to track. Towards the end of the record, songs like ‘Ashen Show’ veer into conventional soundtrack territory with pretty violins, woodwind and pianos relatively unmolested by wayward rhythms, while ‘That Was Was’ is a big blast of near-pastiche electric guitar riffage (depending how you focus your ears, it sounds either like middle-aged men wryly dismantling rock clichés or an enthusiastically talented teenage garage band).
As always with Dirty Three, there’s an occasional hint of studied discord which makes me worry that the wool is being pulled over my ears. For the most part, however, I buy it. It’s nice to hear Dirty Three’s obscured and fragile beauty again.
PATRICK FREYNE