Dirty Three: "She Has No Strings Apollo"

This Australian instrumental trio's seventh album is a collection of songs both improvised and structured. Each musician alternately grounds the other two, creating space for Warren Ellis' wistful violin and piano, Jim White's vigorous, occasionally Latin-style drums, and Mick Turner's guitar dreamscapes.

Easily navigating among 5/4 and other unconventional time signatures, the Dirty Three have a dramatic sound. On "She Lifted the Net," strings and drums weave in and out of the foreground in a seemingly random, yet hardly atonal method.

The songs often triumph in unabashed crescendos, but never in a predictable fashion. Partway into "Rude (and Some Slight Return)," Turner's distorted guitar suddenly recalls the psychedelic blues of the '70s with a bass line that could have come out of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and soon enough we're swept back to a hypnotic violin melody.

Links:
"She Has No Strings Apollo" is out now on Touch & Go Records
Official band Web site: dirtythree.com

Audio: