Love Changes Everything
By Dirty Three
When Dirty Three emerged out of Melbourne in the mid 1990s, they – violin/viola player Warren Ellis, guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White – seemed like a Velvet Underground-influenced jazz trio heading for the darklands with a bellyful of melancholy which could turn into blind fury. Or vice versa. If they sometimes didn’t seem to go anywhere in particular, the journey was often reward enough.
They brought together improvisation, half-remembered folk melodies, psychedelic gypsy music and, as one local wag observed, perpetual rewrites of the Velvet Underground’s Black Angel Death Song. Live, they were often a combustible outfit, with Ellis the visual gymnastic focus.
But side projects – notably Ellis working with Nick Cave in the Bad Seeds and on soundtracks – meant they had a hiatus after 2012′s sometimes turbulent and typically diverse Towards the Low Sun.
Love Changes Everything arrives as a suite of six pieces. It opens with excoriating, filthy staccato guitar on Part I, then goes on to the more reflective and romantic Part II featuring Ellis on piano and rolling thunder drums. This leads naturally into the drone ambience and melodic reinventions of Part III and its even quieter, impressionistic Part IV.
Most commanding after the strident opener is the oceanic surge of Part V before the denouement in Part VI.
Edited together from five days of studio sessions – as producer Teo Macero did for Miles Davis’ albums – Love Changes Everything is a confluence of their styles, largely erring on the thoughtful rather than the tumultuous. Sandpaper atmospherics for those in the know.
Poptical Illusion
By John Cale
Typographically, the album title has “pop” in capitals, but few would come to 82-year-old Cale for radio-friendly hits. Almost six decades after he packed up his viola and left the Velvet Underground, he continues on his wayward, challenging and occasionally brilliant way.
His 2023 Mercy album – a moody, sober affair – was in our best of the year selection, while this slightly more upbeat collection does hint at pop (Davies and Wales), offers beguiling melodies (Edge of Reason, Setting Fires) and lets fly with some VU drone, repetition and abrasive texture (Shark-Shark).
In fact, Cale sounds like he’s mellowing (“like the wizard of Oz I’ve seen much of it grow”) and enjoying himself, even if these times are fraught: “The right-wingers burning their libraries down” in the distorted vocal on Company Commander. He still offers sonic challenges (the searing backdrop and percussive explosions disrupt Calling You Out) but There Will Be No River (“the thunderstorms are gone, beaming me down Scotty”) nods to Brian Eno’s pastoral By This River.
POPtical Illusion – with synths, beatbox percussion, strings, raw guitars and hypnotic melodies – may be the most surprisingly agreeable “pop” album from classically trained Cale since Hobosapiens 20 years ago.
These albums are available digitally on CD and vinyl. John Cale’s has extra tracks with the download.
