Dirty Three
Horse Stories
Touch and Go
Release Date: 1996
I've been trying to write a review of Dirty Three's new album, Horse Stories,
for three days. This should not be a hard task. I love the album. So it's not that I'm trying to find new and interesting ways to trash a record. I've listened to it approximately 7.64 million times. I'd have to sleep with my CD player on "repeat" to spend any more time with it playing in my house. So it's not that I'm having a hard time getting through the album.
But the words just weren't coming. So I've stared at the blank blue screen in front of me, turned the volume up, turned it down again, opened a fresh Dr. Pepper, chowed down a candy bar, restarted the record, opened another Dr. Pepper, broke into a cold sweat, and stared at the screen some more (my already short attention span fucked up even more by all that sugar and caffeine). I normally live to review music I'm so emotionally involved with, music I think is daring and different and brilliant that I thinks makes the world a better place just by existing.
And then it hit me. There are no words to Dirty Three's music. Suddenly, I knew the reason.
Language eventually fails.
Warren Ellis wrenches emotions out of his violin that no Danielle Steele novel can ever hope to cliché, while drummer Jim White pounds rhythms the heart yearns to beat. Mick Turner coaxes secrets out of his guitar that no normal person would breathe to a living soul. Even on "Horse," the album's one track with vocals, the voices of Ellis and guest Andria Degen aren't forming words, just adding new notes to the symphony.
Dirty Three expresses the pain, hope, fear and loss that you try to write about in your diary but can't. Their music touches the places in your soul that you'd try to describe to your shrink, or your ratty old teddy bear, or the blank walls of your room, if only you knew how. Their music is beauty's rapturous zenith and grime's seedy underbelly.
Which is why they may be hip in indie circles for years to come, but they'll never be R.E.M. The squirm factor in popular music is lower than Forrest Gump's IQ. Music that evokes this degree of discomfort has never been embraced by the rope-belt-wearing weekend-warrior masses. Horse Stories (or, for that matter, any Dirty Three album) would rather rip your ear off, chew it up and feed it back to you than let you tune it out.
Maybe due to the fact they started out as a house band in their native Australia, Dirty Three play some sort of folk-rock-punk drinking songs. Ellis' glorious ambient fiddlecraft, backed by the band's non-rhythm section, is an appropriate soundtrack for a dancing a jig, downing a shot of whiskey, or confessing your life story to the uninterested stranger sitting on the stool next to you.
Raw like sushi doesn't even begin to cover it. The biggest problem for the McMusic consumer is Horse Stories' defiance of emotional pigeonholing. You can't make this your depression album, only to pull out when you need a good cry. A typical Dirty Three composition will take you on a ride from despair to jubilation to quiet desperation to inner peace, all in one song and without a seat belt.
The various parts dance and play in a way few bands can conjure. Turner's guitar sneaks up on Ellis' wailing violin, calming or inciting it at whim. White blazes his own trail; sometimes the strings follow, sometimes they burn the map so that no one can. Only musicians who are truly masters of their instruments can take the kind of melodic and rhythmic risks these guys take and pull them off.
So that's my cop-out. Trying to actually capture in words what Ellis
+ co. do would betray the very essence of the music. Don't go looking for another review to tell you what they sound like; they won't be able to do it justice either. Instead, if you've got the brains, guts, and a jones for music that actually means something, go directly to your nearest record retailer and purchase Horse Stories immediately. It's the musical equivalent of Russian caviar: rich, decadent and somewhat crass. Not for everyone, but infinitely rewarding to those who do.
-- Lindy Powell
powell@outersound.com
