The music of the Dirty Three has always sounded as though it were spawned in
broken
bedrooms, tucked away nooks where dreams, like echo chambers, foster
earthquakes
of their own. Fourteen years come and gone, with the fields of many musical
groups
having since been lain fallow, this Australian trio still wring an earthly
romanticism from
their beloved instruments — the difference this time around being that their
gamut is
decidedly more broad, with, in addition to the usual violin, guitar and drums,
mandolin,
bouzouki, organ, piano and bagpipes all taking up lodgings in these rustic
compositions.
The music is episodic, slyly repetitious, simultaneously lulling and
disruptive. Sea-shanty
rhythms, pious guitar murmuring and the dizzying glissandi of Warren Ellis' violin
cue fond
memories of Whatever You Love, You Are, yet here the arrangements are
far
less
frictional and loose. On "She Passed Through" and "This Night," in
particular, a buzzing
rhythm section, augmented by strings and horns, lifts the caustic mood. This
album more than any other swiftly dispels the notion that the trio are condemned
to register wary
introspection
through brooding atmospheres.
The album opens with broad bow strokes and Jim White's skittery way with
percussion,
fashioning in a mercurial cascade of images, stumbling and melting in their
own internal
dreamlike logic. These rattlesnake shakes, fair-skinned guitar tones and
vacillating
violin lines lock arms in the latter portion of "She Passed Through" and dance
in a most
exultant manner. Other works are more angular, gritty, rock-oriented pieces
that one
could very well imagine performed in a Celtic pub some late night. Adorned
with
fractured folk instruments and loops of nagging insistence, the upbeat "Doris" presents a drunk,
sensual glint
in its clip-clop rhythms and scratchy chromatic falls.
Whereas
previous efforts would have snippets of silence woven through the sounds,
creating a
supple, airy web, even this album's calmest moments are fluid and manage to
find an
uplifting balance between winsomeness and acridity. And though most moments
establish a pleasing drift, the truly standout ruminations that were to be
found in past
efforts (e.g. "I Really Should Have Gone Out Last Night" on Whatever You Love,
You Are
and "The Restless Waves" on Ocean Songs) are absent. For all that, as on most
Dirty
Three albums, the environment in which the recording took place (a beach house
in
Sutherland Bay this time) itself plays a part in the proceedings, endowing
moments with a
resonant, rich space for the action to unfold.
Chan Marshall (of Cat Power) also lends her full-bodied yelp to "Great Waves,"
the first Dirty Three
song in which a human voice takes the stage. Rather
than
distastefully distracting from the swaying textures,
Marshall's
voice accentuates and carries forth the melodic shards, hacked out
on
indigenous
stringed instruments, so well one wishes her participation might have been
more frequent. As it stands, her presence is but one endearing aspect of
an album
that clearly searches for alternatives. By not recognizing
their ends as
absolute, Cinders finds the Dirty Three stretching their arms out once
more,
finding
lovingly sculpted spaces that are easy to admire.
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