The noisy life

The Dirty Three offer a distorted audio-vérité

by Roni Sarig

For the leader of an instrumental outfit that employs violin, guitar, and drums to express the melancholy, confusion, pain, and fury most groups reserve for their lyrics, Warren Ellis of the Australian trio Dirty Three is incredibly vocal -- chatty even. Especially at three o'clock in the morning, when he calls me from his flat in the group's newly adopted hometown of London. Ellis -- who brings his band to the Middle East Café on Sunday, on the heels of their new Horse Stories -- has been in the studio all night lending his violin talents to a new Nick Cave record, but he rambles on as if he'd just woken from a year-long slumber.

Ellis's reputation for loquaciousness precedes him. He's earned it for the Dirty Three's live shows, which feature no singing but plenty of between-song banter. "I started talking because no one else would and I wanted to create more of an intimate thing. I usually make up stories or tell what the song's about. They can be quite miserable things, and people sort of laugh at them. It's funny to have people laugh at things that were really traumatic in your life. It's a bit like having your own talk show. It's quite therapeutic."

England's New Musical Express newspaper quoted Ellis introducing a number this way: "This song's about when you're in a relationship and you realize from the first day that it's fucked but you stay in it for three years. This song's dedicated to people who realize just how wrong and fucked-up and stupid everything is but still bother with it anyway. This song's for dead friends, for friends you once knew but have now forgotten, this song's about life and love and hope when it's three in the morning and the only light on is in your fridge and you have nothing to eat but the remains of a three-day-old pizza and you really want to get drunk but you have no friends left and you'd rather be walking in the park anyway. This song's for anyone who's ever had a dead friend."

Verbose, indeed, especially considering that the Dirty Three's music needs no explanation. It's instrumental, conceptual rock -- not the unapproachable techie masturbation commonly offered in the genre but it's raw, earthy, naked, folk poetry that speaks on an instinctive level. "As an instrumental group we rely more on dynamics, and we've developed into quite an intense outfit," Ellis says. "We can get across messages without having to have words. People can relate to the emotional vitality of the music."

The Dirty Three formed four years ago when Ellis hooked up with drummer Jim White and guitarist Mick Turner, two longtime Melbourne scenesters who'd played in punk groups like the Sick Things, Fungus Brain, and Venom P. Stinger. At their first gig Ellis strapped a guitar pick-up onto his violin with a rubber band and added up enough effects to mask the instrument's sound. "Violins in rock music never appealed to me," explains Ellis, who was trained classically as a kid, then ventured into country and Celtic folk music. "Initially I was trying to disguise the sound of it. I just started messing around with feedback and distortion pedals."

The band's unusual instrumentation caught on and soon the Dirty Three were doing Australian gigs with bands like Pavement and Sonic Youth. Impressed, these groups invited the Dirty Three to the US, where last year they played some Lollapalooza dates, opened for Pavement, and did two tours on their own.

Like its predecessors -- Sad & Dangerous and The Dirty Three (both released in 1995) -- the new Horse Stories waxes and wanes its way from chilling serenity to gut-wrenching sonic maelstrom, led by Ellis's sometimes-wistful/ sometimes-shrill but always beautiful violin. It can sound like John Cale-era Velvet Underground, or like a Gypsy band on acid. Horse Stories, though, finds the group attempting to tame their free-flowing, improvisational folk jazz into more traditional song structures.

"Sad & Dangerous was just us learning the songs -- recording them so we could remember them. The Dirty Three was recorded live in an old theater in a day and a half. The new album is the first we recorded knowing it was going to come out as an album. Originally we used to have very simple riffs and then use dynamics to make the pieces different. As time has gone on, we've tried a bit more to write decent melodies."

Horse Stories' improved cohesion has not made songs like "Sue's Last Ride," "Hope," and the reworked Greek folk tune "I Remember a Time When You Used To Love Me" any less stirring. In fact, it may even make the album a bit more direct. Ellis sums up, "This album is incredibly personal, because last year was such an unusual year for us. We left every thing behind in Australia and were on the road every day for 10 months. We gained a lot and lost a lot. And it comes out in the music."

The Dirty Three play the Middle East Café in Central Square, Cambridge, this Sunday, September 8, with openers Cat Power and Chymer. Call 864-EAST.