Dirty Three prove the theory that love changes everything

I first discovered Dirty Three while watching Warren Ellis stomping and writhing on NPR’s famous Tiny Desk. At the time, their latest album had just been released, 2012 Towards the low sunand the trio of Ellis, guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White huddled together and patiently strolled through 18.5 minutes of sonic exploration.

Aside from a live record and a few brief tours together, no new music was released by Dirty Three over the next 12 years. Each member of Dirty Three was productive elsewhere instead. Warren Ellis wrote in his memoirs: Nina Simone’s chewing gumand was involved in every project related to Nick Cave. Mick Turner worked primarily as a record producer and visual artist, and Jim White worked with the likes of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Cat Power, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile. White also released his first solo album earlier this year.

Love changes everything marks their return with a torrent of unfiltered instrumental music. It’s a raw, upbeat, unforgivingly pure brand of jazz, clearly distilled by the iconoclasts of their respective artistic professions. The record is a collection of musical variations on the title theme, with each song just a numbered piece of the overall whole.

The best Dirty Three experiences start with primal melodies that, after a certain journey, erupt into jubilation. They are raw and, yes, “dirty” sound collages. On “I,” Ellis, from a bed of surging reverb and guitar sludge, strokes his violin right through the noise. A march emerges from White’s drums, and the trio eventually pushes it toward a genuine pop-punk coda.

As his recent film scores with Nick Cave demonstrate, Ellis’ piano playing is remarkably poignant, uncomplicated and haunting. On “II,” he sets the rhythm while White’s stop-and-go drums take the lead, serving as both lyrics and melody. Turner’s guitar playing grounds the whole thing, while a synthesizer and an ethereal voice alternately enrich the whole.

If love is the theme here, then “III” is marked by that kind of optimistic early-morning love – really optimistic, like in the coffee commercials. White bundles Ellis and Turner’s search with his own brush clicks and cymbal glances. Ellis alternates between rising and falling piano chords, eventually arriving at a morning hymn-like structure that he mirrors and then destroys with his violin. On “III,” each player gives the other so much space, but it never feels muted. I think that’s what decades of playing together and decades of being apart sound like.

Dirty Three’s greatest strength lies in their ability to let each of their instruments drive the melody forward, sometimes simultaneously. Turner’s guitar drives “IV,” initially recalling the opening chords of “Maggot Brain.” But Ellis’s magnificent viola flourishes are determined and powerful, ultimately lifting this track into the territory of a thoroughly sad Western film score.

Constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, “V” finds Turner trying to find a combination of honky-tonk and power-rock riff. Ellis eventually responds with some of his trademark violin sounds. It’s a sweeping vamp that will likely swell into a dangerous wave when played live. In the final ten minutes of Love changes everythingDirty Three are pulsing. “VI” has such a winding atmosphere that it’s a catchy tune for anyone looking for a wordless mantra. You can hear Ellis clicking through various effects pedals for his violin, capturing the musical journey in real time. The song is completely built up and has no crash, it spirals eternally skyward. A big musical resolution never comes, but Dirty Three’s music has never resolved cleanly. Narratively, their songs lack the expected closure, becoming a kind of real meditation music.

At Love changes everything, Dirty Three continue their long career doing just that: organic, meditative post-rock jazz that always approaches a single moment modestly, without pretense or distraction. The album is a study in spontaneous collaborative artistic creation, intentionally human in this increasingly technological void. If it takes another decade before we get another album, we should be content to revel in that collaborative joy and the musical curiosity it contains. Love changes everything.