Dirty Three
The first part is undeniably true. In fact, for Low’s overweeningly delicate performance–which made Big Star’s Sister Lovers sound like the Stooges’ Fun House–the management would have done better to provide hot chocolate and warm beds. The second part is an amazing leap of logic. The Dirty Three, an instrumental trio from Melbourne, Australia, are nothing if not a shit-kicking rock ‘n’ roll band, with the hard-living looks and reflexive twitches of compulsive musicians–drummer Jim White probably struck as many beats while warming up as Low’s Mimi Parker did during an entire set. Ellis is downright hyperactive, leaping on and off amplifiers, playing half a song on his knees and the rest on his back, and striking poses that would be gag-inducing if he were a guitarist and yet aren’t because he isn’t. He has an occasional gig as a sideman for Nick Cave, and it isn’t hard to imagine him stealing the spotlight.
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But even a carried-away fiddler has to get down to business, and musically everything is on point–guitarist Mick Turner helps build the extended climax of the ten-minute “Indian Love Song,” providing clean, crisp lines for Ellis to color wildly outside of. The tightly wound waltz of “I Remember a Time When You Used to Love Me,” one of the centerpieces of their latest release, Horse Stories, is muted at the outset by Ellis’s brittle plucking, which maintains the tension nicely until he sweeps himself off his own feet again. “Very sexual, isn’t it?” a stranger said to me then, and I don’t think he was hitting on me, just unable to contain a pronouncement of the obvious.
