From the Archives: The Dirty Three :: Whatever You Love, You Are

Sometimes it’s not enough to survive winter. Sometimes you want winter to cut you just so that you can enjoy the warmth of your own blood, however fleeting the pleasure. Sometimes you want to traverse dark roads bundled in shadow and avoiding the eyes of passing strangers. Sometimes you wish to visit a place inside yourself that is far less civilized, a place that, though you’ve been many times before, still requires a map to locate.

This map can take many forms, and has, for centuries, done so for many people. Some wish to find these roads through drink or pills or violence; others, the more sane, the more austere prefer music. Not anything will do of course, it must be, preferably non vocal, with no real importance placed on the composition’s simplicity or complication. it must, however, possess a certain quality that is impossible to define or explain until it is experienced.

The Dirty Three certainly has such quality, and can be retained for use as such a map, and easily so. Personally, I would choose 2000’s impeccable Whatever You Love, You Are, an album whose presence in my life I owe solely to Jamie. When I first moved to Seattle in the fall of the same year, a friend bought me tickets to Shannon Wright with the Dirty Three opening. Having just moved to a new city, and not really knowing anyone, of course I would rather stay home and mope. Little did I know what a mistake I was making. A year later I had the chance to see Nick Cave at the Paramount Theater with Warren Ellis in the supporting band, and had a pretty decent idea of the size of my mistake.

On Whatever You Love, You Are, The Dirty Three are the musical equivalent of a good cry. The music is dark and brooding, yet fraught with a beauty as delicate as the finest filigree. Emotions reel with Warren Ellis’ violin, while Jim White’s percussion makes want to open your chest to let the pressure off of your rotten heart; Mick Turner’s guitar makes you roll on the floor, tearing at your hair. it is cathartic and exquisite; it is bliss.

As the final strains of "Lullabye For Christie" fades from your speakers you shake your head and return to reality. You’ve travelled your dark roads and come back unscathed, though likely a little changed; behind your eyes lurks a new wisdom . However, isn’t that the allure of travel?