Dirty Three have reawakened for a comeback tour. They remain as sublime and savage as ever
Dirty Three's Warren Ellis and Jim White performing live at Hamer Hall for RISING festival, June 2024. (Supplied: Rick Clifford/RISING festival)
Rare is the artist capable of reducing the legendary Nick Cave to the status of mere fanboy. But Dirty Three are one such act.
"Dirty Three are my favourite live band. No contest" Cave declared in 2017. And he's far from alone in his assessment of the instrumental trio, consisting of drummer Jim White, guitarist Mick Turner and violinist Warren Ellis.
Capable of making a catastrophic din but also devastatingly poignant, Dirty Three's untamed stage show excels at expressing what words cannot.
Soothing, savaging, and soaked in gothic grandeur, they chart sublime highs and calamitous lows in compositions that possess the volcanos-erupting-in-slow-motion climaxes of post-rock and the organic tension of improvisational music.
The kind of thrilling live band always remembered with misty-eyed, awe-struck reverence. ('Remember the lightning storm at Meredith? Unforgettable!')
However, with Ellis having become Cave's closest collaborator, Dirty Three performances have become an increasingly rare delicacy since their formation in 1992, even as they retain their cult status.
This month, Dirty Three return with Love Changes Everything, their first new album in more than a decade. And along with it, a national tour.
It's fitting their reawakening should begin at Melbourne's RISING festival with their first three hometown shows in 12 years.
They juxtapose new album material – adorned with ghostly melodies, lonesome keys and ominous crescendos – with cuts from their earliest, most revered records: 1995's self-titled LP, 1996's Horse Stories and 1998's famously Steve Albini-produced Ocean Songs.
Gracing the stage at Hamer Hall means the trio benefit from crystal clear sound, a lavish lighting set-up and swirling projections, plus a fine layer of dry ice for added mystique.
The esteemed concert hall is a long way from the grimy pubs in which Dirty Three first cut their teeth, as Ellis points out early in the set.
"It's not like The Punters Club. It was all about VB, speed, spitting everywhere. And I miss it," he says, requesting a "spit bucket" from hapless stage-hand Jonathan. "It's part of the act now," he deadpans, nestling himself at the front of the stage for the first of many entertaining interactions with the crowd.
Lamenting the good old days (including the inflated cost of red wine and cigarettes to comical effect) works a treat with an audience made up of dedicated long-time followers who are all too keen to be involved.
It's the kind of older demographic you'd expect: More salt than pepper in their hair, bespectacled and well-styled for winter with a fondness for black.
There's the air of reconnecting with old friends but there's also a healthy contingent of younger fans in attendance. One who Ellis playfully roasts as 'not f**king old enough!' when he asks for a show of hands from those who'd attended their '90s shows.
Besides, you don't need to be a storied expert to appreciate the group's abilities.
They double the length and intensity of 'Indian Love Song', where Ellis conducts the crowd in call-and-response vocals and cements his status as Hendrix of the violin. He validates it as a rock 'n' roll instrument, sawing the strings or drawing screeching feedback, while retaining its innate ability to conjure tear-jerking melodies.
The beardy ringleader is less like a frontman and more like a mythical creature.
Call him Gandalf the Wild, bowing feverishly and lurching his frame around the stage as he high-kicks, spontaneously howls, and fully commits his all towards reaching the next drawn-out crescendo or climax.
White's mercurial drumming is equally hypnotic. He shifts effortlessly between wielding drumsticks, mallets and brushes, or casually tosses a tambourine onto his cymbals for added sizzle.
To the side, Turner is a stoic presence, his longing guitar the musical centre around which Ellis and White can ebb and flow.
Together, it's remarkable how they can wield so much feeling and sonic real estate despite only having eight limbs between them.
Three spellbinding instrumentalists closely orbiting each other, conjuring 'Authentic Celestial Music' (as the Ocean Songs track puts it) and 'Loose Magic' (as Jen Cloher described it in their 2017 ode to the band).
"Salvation sometimes comes in the strangest form," Ellis notes sagely towards the night's conclusion. "It could be three angels… like me, Mick and Jim... the most soothing, melancholic, stakes-shifting thing you've ever heard."
Amen.
While the music provokes intense feelings, Ellis' sweary, freewheeling banter elicits laughs as he bemoans the torment of acoustic Billy Joel covers or encourages us to, like him, watch AC/DC's latest tour on YouTube and marvel at the stamina of a 69-year-old Angus Young.
His morbid song introductions are worth the price of admission alone.
The sorrowful slow-burn of 'Sky Above, Sea Below'? "A song about when you go outside and even the birds seem to be telling you to get f**ked!"
The colossally dejected 'Some Summers They Drop Like Flies' concerns "coming home one Christmas… [and] your phone book is wiped out because everyone's dead."
Best of all is the triumphant melancholy of 'Everything's F**ked'.
"This was our attempt at a hit single in 1994," Ellis explains. It failed, "but in 100 years' time this will top the ARIA Charts as the best Australian song of all time," he continues.
"A song about being in a f**king hole… you've been there before and so you decide to decorate."
Ellis offsets the group's dour music with gallows humour because "the devil has a much better sense of humour than god," as he muses onstage.
From arriving onstage around 8pm to the sounds of Boz Scaggs 'Lido Shuffle' (a bit of a band tradition) to a crowning rendition of 'Sue's Last Ride', nearly three entertaining if emotionally exhausting hours later, it becomes clear what a singular, dynamic force Dirty Three truly are.
Their lengthy gaps of inactivity are almost necessary. Theirs is not an experience you take lightly or could partake on the regular.
They demand a lot more than your average gig but reward your patience by getting right to the heart of what live music is all about – the beautiful, bittersweet truth of truly being in the moment.
Each of their enthralling epics, no matter how sprawling, is ephemeral. As soon as the music comes alive, surging with vitality and feeling, it begins dying; doomed to vanish into the night and lost to our foggy memory. But that's precisely what makes its performance so vital.
Time, like love, changes everything. But Dirty Three's colossal chemistry, if only for the length of their performances, feels impervious to such forces.
There's no telling when our next encounter with Ellis, White and Turner will be, so do not make the mistake of missing their wild passion while you're able. And savour it.
Love Changes Everything is out digitally on 28 June. Catch Dirty Three live at the following dates.
Tuesday 18 June – Canberra Theatre
Wednesday 19 June – Anita's Theatre, Thirroul
Thursday 20 June – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Saturday 22 June – Fremantle Passenger Terminal
Monday 24 June – Hindley St Music Hall, Adelaide
Wednesday 26 June – Odeon Theatre, Hobart
Friday 28 June – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday 29 June – The Green Room, Byron Bay