DIRTY THREE - LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING

Released: 28/06/2024

The Australian trio of multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis (The Bad Seeds; Grinderman), guitarist Mick Turner (formerly of legendary hardcore outfit Sick Things) and virtuoso drummer Jim White return with their first album in over a decade – a collection of truly stunning and visceral instrumental art rock. I’m inclined to think that the album’s title is ironic, given the clear-eyed, mawkishness-averse reputation of the three men, but we contain multitudes, don’t we; or, um, perhaps it’s an homage to Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s song of the same name from the musical Aspects of Love, and made famous by Michael Crawford. That every one of the six tracks on the record is simply called ‘Love Changes Everything’ (I-VI), however, leads me to believe that it is grade-A sarcasm.

Semantic parsing aside, there are few bands as elemental as Dirty Three, who have the ability to so vividly conjure aspects of the natural world through their playing. I love all of the works here, but special mention must go to the opening track, ‘Love Changes Everything I’, which starts with a disgustingly heavy riff even Tony Iommi might shy away from, over which Ellis’s ripping violin evokes the Call to Prayer, and beneath which the primal rhythm sounds like Beat Happening drummer Heather Lewis falling down a well while still attempting to play, before everything coalesces, briefly, into a dazzling and motorik Amon Düül II-like concoction. While in ‘Love Changes Everything II’, a plaintive, iterative piano riff rolls like an ebbing tide, stramashed with the free drums and guitar, while sporadic spectral voices and reverberant noise blasts beam like the midday sun down onto the ocean below.