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at a glance...
Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
Year Formed: 1991
Members:
Warren Ellis -violin
Mick Turner -guitar
Jim White -drums
Notes:
The Dirty Three started out as a low-pressure way
for three guys to earn beer money by playing
background music in a Melbourne watering
hole. But word of their soaring, hyper-emotional
performances spread, and in 1995 they set out on
the first of many world tours. The band's members
have scattered to the winds (its members live on
three different continents), but they still
assemble to tour and record albums and film
soundtracks.
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Dirty Three
Whatever You Love, You Are
Touch and Go, Released 2000
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The Dirty Three's music is fabulous, but limited. Once you've got a few of their records, or have seen a few shows, you get to know those boundaries pretty well. Most of the songs either start out slow, build up
to a crescendo, then fade away, or start out slow, build to a quietly intense emotional peak, and then fade away. The Three seem to recognize this, because this is their second album to mess with the formula. On 1998's Ocean Songs they cut out the crescendos and tried, with partial success, to make their music compelling by never releasing its accumulating tension. A neat idea, but it makes for exhausting listening.
Whatever You Love, You Are takes another route; its six tracks emphasize the heart-tugging emotionalism that animates the trio's music, while the arrangements leave the live format behind in order to adorn each tune with a proliferation of seething, sighing violins, dusty distant guitar notes, and rustling percussion accents. The trick works; the Dirty Three have come up with their most accessible album to date without sacrificing one iota of
their special charms.
If you like Dirty Three, check out:
The Boxhead Ensemble The Last Place To Go
Tren Brothers EP
Galaxie 500 This Is Our Music
Luna Days of Our Nights
The High Llamas Snowbug
-- Bill Meyer
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Copyright © 1997-2002 Ink Blot Magazine. All rights reserved.
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