May 11-17, 2003, UK
So you pack your little sandwiches and climb into your little car and put your little foot down hard on the pedal with Houses of the Holy
blasting really fuckin' loud. You can't go south from Brighton on that
beach with all the little pebbles because you'd drive into the sea so
you head north and soon your little heart is pounding and your little
sandwiches are all eaten up but at last you've driven "1000 Miles" and
the last sound you hear is your little heart exploding with joy because
you know at last you are exactly where you need to be. And where I
needed to be was on the Dirty Three UK tour because a band that can
alternate tears of sorrow and joy and exhilaration so rapidly is a rare
thing indeed. Rumours that violinist Warren Ellis was a little fed up
of touring meant that I wanted to make the most of this as they might
not be back for a long time. In the end I made it to four shows in
Brighton, Leicester, Leeds and the second smaller London gig, skipping
the big London gig in favour of Calla who I'd never seen before and who
were unfussily majestic and almost as intense. I also missed the
Glasgow date as I headed into London that day to see the last gig on
the Noxagt tour, another idiosyncratic trio who are rather more brutal.
Warren Ellis is a seasoned raconteur with hilarious tales to introduce
each intense instrumental beauty. These are loose and shift shape every
night around a similar theme. In Leicester heckles diverted some of
them off track into even more oddly comedic angles. So Warren might
tell a silly story of how their Ocean Songs
album was inspired by the smell of urine in a landlocked Chicago heavy
metal studio. Then the four of them kick into some deleriously gorgeous
yet robust and hard edged rock, shaped in chemical moulds that only
years of playing together can bring. Four? Does that make them the
Dirty Three Plus One now? Relative newcomer Martin Casey who plays
alongside Warren in the Bad Seeds seemed unsurprisingly a little more
tentative in Brighton but fit right in with the others, and Warren and
the utterly individual and ever more awe inspiring loose limbed drummer
Jim White seem to have a particularly telepathic understanding of those
ecstatic places they can open up and bleed. Some tunes got pushed into
extended foraging forays that upped the intensity ante some, and in
Brighton and London when they ran down "Sue's Last Ride" the levels and
layers they built and built just seemed like they couldn't get any
higher and just kept on reaching for the sun. Warren reckons guitarist
Mick Turner regularly walks on water in hotel baths, but he certainly
has developed a highly original and utterly distinctive style of
playing that seems to reflect the wide open desert shores and burning
sun of his former homeland Australia. If Warren's violin is a skyburst
of emotive colour and Jim's drumming skitters like pebbles pulled by
roaring waves on the beach, then Mick is probably painting in the
desert lands and mountain ranges in the heady elemental dirty brew.
What was really nice about seeing the band a few times was the way they
just seemed to get better every night, although the Leeds show at
Brudenell Social Club won out over the last sold out London show at the
dark and dingy Barfly due to better atmosphere and sound in a nicer
venue. The Brighton and Leeds shows were a contrast being all seated
theatres, making Warren's habit of spitting high into the air as he
bows his little violin and kicks his leg backwards seem slightly
incongruous and transgressive. In Brighton Clogs played a pleasantly
engaging set of what you might call chamber rock if you were feeling
lazy after an alcohol fueled road trip holiday. But at least I didn't
compare them to Rachel's like I did at the gig. In Leicester and Leeds
Mr Cardboard Boxman were as much a revelation as two scruffy Australian
guitar twangers with an array of looping gadgets and weird junk shop
instruments could be, playing part improvised cutout sundown
reflections. But it was Dirty Three who had the songs for the ladies
with the darkness in their hearts.