DIRTY THREE
Love Changes Everything (Bella Union)
The amps hum, and they’re back. First album since 2012 from the old lads Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White – also seen in Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, Xylouris White, yadda yadda – and the Dirty Three spirit still courses strong and unfucked-with. The violin still loops enigmatically and leaps suddenly, the guitar and drums still skitter and crash, the music as a whole still clamours and builds and evokes sunset sets at green music festivals.
Love Changes Everything comprises six Roman-numbered songs, with the noisier bits at the edges. I slowly cranks its gears into a raucous smash and grab, before II mixes tentative piano with a strange reoccurring synth gleam. The junkshop playfulness continues with V, but it’s VI that rather stuns: a violin loop like a bird flying round the room, guitar and piano getting braver and braver, gesturing towards epic without being so crass as to go there. Salute.
words WILL STEEN