Artist: Dirty Three
Album: Horse Stories
Year: 1996
Instrumental rock can be a bit of a tough sell. Rare is the band than can make instrumental songs that don’t sound like they’re just waiting for a vocalist to come along and sing over them. Rock music has always been defined by a sense of “something to say” and to take the words away seems contrary to the whole idea at times. Melbourne’s Dirty Three, however, have managed to make a career out of just that for the past fifteen years. The band is a sleek, efficient trio, featuring Mick Turner on electric guitar, Jim White on drums and the magical Warren Ellis on violin. Although no single instrument feels more “important” than any other, Ellis’s violin is by far the most prominent. He eschews the usual stately beauty associated with violins, instead creating a scratchy, occasionally violent sound that immediately grabs you attention. Ellis attaches guitar pickups to his violins, creating a sort of ad-hoc electric violin, while still retaining a lot of the traditional sounds of acoustic violins. 1996’s Horse Stories is possibly their strongest album, as it catches the band in the middle of a crossroads. Their work previous to this was very energetic and aggressive, while the albums that came after would be considerably calmer (although no less beautiful or engaging). Horse Stories strikes the perfect balance between the two. Songs like the waltzing “I Remember A Time When Once You Used To Love Me” and particularly the sawing, stomping “Red” fill the need for driving energy. At the same time, the weeping violin on “Warren’s Lament” or the breathless sighs on “Hope” contribute to some of the most beautiful dirges on record. Opening track “1000 Miles” sits happily in the middle of these two extremes, as a midtempo introduction to everything that comes after it. The Dirty Three really do make the impossible possible with their unique brand of instrumental rock and Horse Stories is a fine example.
Artist: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Album: Let Love In
Year: 1994
The Bad Seeds, in my mind, are the culmination of Australian rock music. Like an Australian rock All-Star team, the Bad Seeds are made up of many musicians who played on the records I discussed this week: Nick Cave and (until this month) Mick Harvey from the Birthday Party, Martyn P. Casey from the Triffids and Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three are all constant members. Mr. Foetus himself, J. G. Thirlwell, was involved in their earliest albums. Fellow Aussies Hugo Race and Conway Savage have contributed through the years. All these influences and ideas are boiled down to create the Bad Seeds, a band simply unlike any other. I could talk at length about any of their fourteen albums, but I’ve picked 1994’s Let Love In because I find it’s the easiest to enjoy and most representative of the band as a whole. Cave’s love of drama and big, expressive gestures has evolved from his days in the Birthday Party, veering away from shattered aggression towards a more mature, but still raucous sound. Over the 80s, he established himself as a sort of punk Leonard Cohen, writing troubled, lyrical ballads that sound as dark as humanly possible. With all this, however, came a nasty drug habit and a variety of broken personal relationships. Let Love In is the first Bad Seeds record where Cave sounds completely free from all that baggage. A song like “Loverman” would have wallowed on previous records; here, it explodes. The smoky “Red Right Hand” makes quoting John Milton’s Paradise Lost sound completely natural for a rock band. Cave’s a well-read guy and he hides a lot of literature and Biblical references in his songs. Coupled with a band behind him capable of raining fire and brimstone down on an audience, Cave and his Bad Seeds are truly a force to be reckoned with.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little sojourn through Australian music. This is a subject I care deeply about and not only because I’ve got heritage there. Australia is, in historical terms, an extremely young country, since it only became independent from Britain in 1901. The country hasn’t had much time to develop a uniquely Australian culture and it wasn’t until the 1970s that distinctly Australian bands started appearing. They say something remarkable about the importance of location to music. No American or English band could confront the political issues of Midnight Oil. There’s a huge difference between music written on the beaches of California and the beaches of Perth or Brisbane. Nick Cave wouldn’t be able to write his spiky, dusty music if he hadn’t grown up in a country that matched. Australia permeates all this music I’ve talked about. G’day, mate.
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