Love Changes Everything

Album review

Twelve years after their last album Toward the Low Sun, Australia's improvisational,  alt-everything instrumental trio Dirty Three return with their most ambitious undertaking;  pianist/violinist Warren Ellis (who's been busy with Nick Cave projects), drummer Jim White and guitarist Mick Turner have created a symphony for the new century.  The threesome returned to their now time-honored way of making music on the six-movement suite, Love Changes Everything: exploring textures; darting in and out sounds; working ideas until they are exhausted of possibility. The first movement opens with the band turning up before Ellis enters with dramatic string chords as White keeps time on toms and Turner grinds out a fuzzy line. Eventually they fall into a groove which comes to an abrupt end. It's a method—unchanged since its debut in 1994 with Sad & Dangerous—that's been fashioned into an intermittent but always rewarding career for the band. What makes this angular musical collaboration worth waiting a dozen years between albums for is its ability to find moments of great beauty amongst their devotion to careful, yet "dirty" construction. The third movement begins with a violin drone and quiet twinkling on keys leading into a piano ballad with violin overdubs and drum accents; all evoke a poignant tenderness that underlies many of the motives behind this music before ending with a hushed repeated guitar figure. The fourth movement turns grander with reverb added to the violin while Turner plays a simple melody on electric guitar—sans effect—and White adds deep, resonant drumming. In the fifth movement, the guitar takes a turn with reverb in the opening until Ellis enters sawing away. All three instrumental voices combine for a crescendo before fading away slowly. Another redeeming chapter from inestimable improvisors.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz