About
No one does it like the Dirty Three. Ever since their first gig at an Abbotsford pub in 1992—when Warren Ellis fastened a pickup to his violin with a rubber band to give it some extra snarl—they’ve been following their own path.
While their peers were doing grunge, they were facing each other onstage, making rock without the ego. Jazz without the histrionics. Folk without the troubadours. Improvising rumbling, wide-open instrumentals that pull you in like oil-painted landscapes.
They don’t get together very often these days. But to see them perform is to witness three men shoulder-deep in the task. And to host their hometown return at Hamer Hall after so many years is a scintillating prospect indeed. The aching splendour. The meandering beauty. The mammoth swirl.
It’s impossible to find flaw with the performance, though its x factor is something collectively felt. A kind of accruing, song by fiery song, of irrefutable proof as to how truly great this band is.