Dirty Three
Cinder

LA RECENSIONE

Dirty Three feel more like Canada to me than Australia. You all more or less know Dirty Three, right? No? Well: guitar: Mick Turner; violin & piano: Warren Ellis; drums & the like: Jim White; vocals: none. The dirty trio returns with an album made of real songs, independent from one another, and that have nothing to do with each other: each one lives its own life. The dirty trio changes a bit: they decide to triple the number of tracks compared to their standard and compose 19. 19 small sketches, 19 pearls, 19 hymns to figurative art. It truly seems that our friend Ellis together with his partners decided to transform some Van Gogh, Monet, and company of impressionists’ paintings into sounds. The result is three types of pieces in general:

Romantic pieces: the violin takes the lead, the other instruments form a soft carpet that enriches everything. Memories arise here and there, smiles too, melancholy most of all. Many times simple is beautiful, it is aesthetic. It is indeed time to bring out aesthetics in its most radical meaning. Staticity is the key word.

Academic pieces: the guitar is somewhat confined, while violin and drums seem to duel with extreme pleasure, challenging each other on who strays furthest from the classical harmonic structure. The result is an extraordinary visionariness, which evokes limbos nonexistent on Earth.

Dynamic pieces: the typical staticity of 17 pieces of the album crumbles, making it so that 2 pieces of it (2 black sheep, not in a negative sense) are based on dynamics. One is "Doris", where for the first time the guitar marks out a riff: electric, with a flavor of Irish folk. The legs move, and the stomach demands the darkest of beers. The other piece is "The Zither Player", a masterpiece: here the folk is almost Eastern European, gypsy-like. The instruments roll and make you want to run, then you'll decide where.

The only dispensable pieces are "Amy", which doesn’t say much to me, and "Great Waves", the only one with singing (by Cat Power), where the voice becomes the protagonist and the instruments merely accompany, which is not okay.

As for the rest... if you seek happy, strong, intense memories... they will resurface here. If you also search for instrumental technique, the sweet pleasure of discovering with each listen a new interaction between two different instruments... here you will find peace. If you are looking for a sonic "hot chocolate" in this cold, you will drink it here. If you care for yourselves, here you will discover something new about you. What else is there to say? Nothing, that's enough. Regards