The Dirty Three - London Electric Ballroom - 2/11/00
4/5
By: Toby L
Ohhh well. Nick Cave, despite hype from a certain major UK-based website, isn't appearing. The cult crooning Aussie star of The Bad Seeds was heavily rumoured to be making an appearance with The Dirty Three tonight, who themselves are most likely playing their last London gig for years. But a friendly notice greets us at the door saying that he won't. Fantastic.
So, I guess that leaves us with, well, The Dirty Three. Also Aussies, who broke from Nick Cave's group to form this baffling conundrum, this band push the peddle down hard when their music gets going and don't stop until they've driven down a hill, bashed into a tree and completely combusted their sound. So, basically, it's an unexpected ride. As is the ad-lib provided by the main-man, Warren Ellis who isn't a vocalist as such, but in fact a violinist - and why the devil not? Where are the fiddles in rock music today anyway? His comments consist of surly mumblings, made even more enchanting to listen to by his gruff southern hemisphere accent. His talks with the audience were of bizarre anecdotes and when he tried to make us relate to what he's harping on about, we had no chance of understanding where he was coming from. A good example is when he comments, 'This is a song about when you go mad... I mean when you go (shouts) F**KING CRAZY!' People cheer, but partly out of fear of what will happen to them if they don't react in his favour.
However, their past may be colourful after being in such a legendary band, but their new sound points to a direction that the 850 people in attendence tonight seemingly found compelling. This was judged by the deep, trance-like state induced by fans during 'Sea Above, Sky Below', a moving guitar-driven, percussion-fuelled piece topped off with beautiful, swirling violin and distortion effect. And it's all in that vein really: a sound that to describe can only be done by listening to it. To their credit, their product can transcend into borders of white noise and feedback or on to classical and whinsome body-swayers. Or simply to an explosion, where members of the band go mental, uncontrollably kicking their legs up in the air and screwing up their concentrated faces into the shapes of prunes. It's thinking music: stop listening carefully and you may not reach the zone that they are in, but observe and absorb the sound intently and you're guaranteed a bewildering, but touching live-show.
Their name may be The Dirty Three, and there may be no Cave, but this band deserve a clean and sparkling four out of five.
Artists in this article: The Dirty Three
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