By Jen Seyderhelm

I asked Mick Turner, the electric and bass guitarist for the iconic Australian Rock band Dirty Three, whether love has, indeed, changed everything, as that is the name of the trio’s forthcoming album, their ninth, but the first new one in a weighty 12 years.

The pause was so long that I thought I’d lost connection—or, worse, that Turner had hung up.

‘That’s a good question,” he says, finally.

There is another long silence before Turner speaks again.

“That’s too hard a question.”

Thomas’ reticence to talk about himself, the Three, and their music is understandable, both because the music speaks (read: roars) for itself and, to poach the Walter Payton adage: “When you’re good at something, you’ll tell everyone. When you’re great, they’ll tell you.”

And ooooooooo WEE… Have they told them.

“Dirty Three are my favourite live band,” crows Nick Cave. “No contest … I think it’s because they don’t have a singer … There are three musicians working together, one no less important than the other and well, you can get lost in all that. Their music washes over you and you’re away … When I watch them, they ignite something…. They’re utterly unique and absolutely world-class.”

“Every time I see the Dirty Three, they make me cry,” Cat Power has been noted as saying.

“I remember when I first heard Dirty Three, they were like nothing else around; an instrumental band with a violinist who played like Hendrix, and epic songs that tore at the very fibre of your being,” Zan Rowe memorably said.

And Jen Cloher has perhaps the most poignant reflection on their mesmeric music.

“Their songs, you know, maybe saved someone’s life,” she says. “They’re one of the world’s greatest living bands without a shadow of a doubt … It speaks straight to your heart.”

Dirty Three bandleader and violinist/violist Warren Ellis, however, commented on the new record in a typically straightforward fashion.

“Recorded in five days. Mixed in a year. Nothing has changed. Older and meaner, sadder, and totally dangerous. Dirty Three are 32 years old. Come blow out the candles and help us stick a knife in the cake.”

I called Dirty Three an instrumental rock band in the intro but, to Nick Cave’s point, they’re so much more than that. Whatever genre you can think of, it will be reflected on a track on their albums somewhere.

“I think it could be our best record. We were freer than at any other time, and the playing came so naturally”

There should be a genre called WET in their honour, an acronym from their last names and a state that Warren Ellis is often in during his high-octane playing.

I told Mick this idea. I get the distinct impression that he won’t take the suggestion back to the other two.

Dirty Three is Ellis on violin, mandocaster, and piano (when he’s not literally climbing, prowling or cavorting on stage), Jim White on drums (who sometimes has to avoid the wildly flailing parts of Ellis) and Turner. They were all working in the Melbourne music scene in the early 1990s when they came together for a jam in a kitchen somewhere, and the band was born.

The three have been prolific in their output together and apart, with Ellis also a member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Jim White part of Xylouris White with Cretan lute player Giorgos Xylouris, and Turner in Mess Esque with Helen Fransmann, whom he was performing with the night we spoke, as well as the Eleanor Jawurlngali Triad.

Jawurlngali is a Mudburra and Garrawa woman from the Northern Territory who contacted Dirty Three for permission to create vocals to accompany one of their instrumental pieces. Mick said he was so blown way by her ethereal voice that the collaboration transcended the initial request.

Mick Turner still lives in Melbourne, with Ellis in Paris and White in New York. He reckons he tours the least of the three, but I got the tangible impression that he doesn’t include the gigs that don’t put him on an aeroplane.

The pandemic “allowed us to catch up more than we had done for a long time” as well as more painting time for Thomas. His artwork has been exhibited here and overseas and graces all of Dirty Three’s album covers, bar one, including the forthcoming Love Changes Everything, available June 14. Those are physical copies (including vinyl, naturally), which you can purchase at the June 18 show at the Canberra Theatre Centre.

On stage, the Dirty Three takes your breath away. Sucker punches your soul. Forces you up, up, and out of your seat to sway your body and stomp your feet. Create mental stories to the instrumental pictures they describe. It is a living, breathing, visceral experience.

“There’s a looseness to us, and that’s the joy of it on stage and off,” Turner says, smiling at the thought. “It’s such a great band to be in and a very expressive medium.

“Three is the right number. We feed off each other, and it works.

As for the forthcoming shows, be sure to get your cardio in.

“We’ll play a large part of the new album; it’ll be a long show, 2 to 3 hours at least,” Turner explains. “There will be one or two songs from all the albums we’ve released. It will be spectacular. It sweeps you off, and the audience comes with us.

The new album features tracks called Love Changes Everything I-VII. According to Turner, the first single, available now, is the rockiest.

“When we recorded this album, we just set up and played and played over a few days,” he recalls. “Ideas were thrown around, but there was not a lot of need to sit around and talk.

“I think it could be our best record,” he suddenly states. “We were freer than at any other time, and the playing came so naturally.

“It’s satisfying. And I believe we really captured what’s best about Dirty Three.”

But enough of the artwork, experience and extracurriculars. Back to the question at hand. Has love changed everything for the trio in the 12 years since the last album and the two decades since they’ve been in Canberra?

Warren Ellis described the song, The Pier, during Dirty Three’s Tiny Desk Concert in the US as being about “realising you’re the only sane one and you want to destroy the world by drowning them in your pyjama pants in a lake and undermining Facebook by realising a new way of communicating.”

I probably deserved a similar response. I’ve realised that this trio speaks a unique language together, different from any I’ve ever encountered before. Yet, I understand it. And the answer I take away from their Canberra concert will be different from yours.

It will still likely involve pyjamas.

Dirty Three perform at Canberra Theatre on Tuesday, 18 June. Tickets are $85 – $99 + bf via Canberra Ticketing.

Pre-order the new album here!!!