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Dirty Three – Love Changes Everything (2024, Australia)
Our next spotlight is on number 1215 on The List, submitted by @soundclamp.
About this time last year I saw a bear in the wild, which led to this spotlight with a “Goldilocks and The Three Bears”/choose-your-own-bear-adjacent-soundtrack theme. Then just this past weekend, I saw not one but three bears in the wild but, alas, I apparently used up all the albums on The List with “bear” in the title for that previous spotlight and can’t do a repeat. And so, in honour of this year’s breathtaking ursine sighting, I’m instead going to simply spotlight a band whose name is kinda sorta related, in that the bears were both three and most likely dirty (I mean, I can’t verify that the bears had not recently showered, but they were walking/sitting on a highway not far from where a herd of mountain goats had just used it as a toilet and moved on).
At the very least, the Dirty Three just happens to come from a country whose local fauna can also kill you, and – while we were in fact listening to a metal band while driving past the bears (YOB’s “Beauty in Falling Leaves“, to be exact) – the Dirty Three’s instrumental, violin-forward, dynamic rock sound would’ve also been a lovely soundtrack to a sighting of these gorgeous creatures. Also, apparently Dirty Three is “one of the most electrifying live bands around”, and I would argue that seeing grizzly bears (the type of bear spotted this year) mere metres away is one of the most electrifying experiences I can think of. And, as an added justification for choosing this album, violinist/keyboardist Warren Ellis donated land just a few years ago for a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra that counts bears (sun bears, specifically) among its residents, so here we are.
Anyway, I’m kind of embarrassed to say that this is the first I’ve really heard anything from the Dirty Three. I was a giant Nick Cave fan for a few years and had looked into Cave’s side projects with Ellis, but never really looked into Ellis’ own work. So, colour me surprised at finding out just today that the Dirty Three pre-dates Ellis joining The Bad Seeds, as the band formed in 1992 and Ellis’ first Seeds album was Let Love In (1994). The other two members, Mick Turner (guitar, organ, bass) and Jim White (drums), also seem to be rather prolific, so it looks like I have some rabbit holes to go down. As they say: bears, beats, Battlestar Galactica.
