So You Know What Will Get You You Know Where with US Maple

Earlier today I found myself in a strange conversation regarding the sadly defunct and painfully original rock band known as US Maple. My peers were understandably bemused when I posted a video of the band’s debut single ‘Stuck’ and the subsequent reaction was both amusing and utterly enlightening to me. When you have loved a band as twisted, abnormal and thoroughly unconventional as US Maple undoubtedly were at the height of their powers for most of your mature life, it becomes relatively easy to forget just how bizarre such fragmented and unusual music must sound to an impartial observer. Their bemusement stemmed from the fact that anyone could enjoy such undeniably ridiculous music, much less spend real human money on a full discography and pay to see the band live on more than one occasion. My own bemusement came from the fact that I couldn’t immediately think of an abundance of reasons as to why exactly I find myself growing fonder of their unique clamour as the years draw by. I found myself pondering the rich seam of intrigue that had opened between the two opposing camps and what if anything either of us could hope to learn from the other.

First, a brief history lesson for the uninitiated. US Maple were the band formed in 1995 from the ashes of two other well regarded Chicago groups – vocalist Al Johnson and guitarist Mark Shippy from Shorty, drummer Pat Samson and second guitarist Todd Rittman from the Mercury Players. Conceived as a deliberately oxymoronic anti-rock rock band, the quartet set out to defy the conventions of rock music with the very tools used to propagate populist mainstream music to the masses. In the hands of Shippy and Rittman, the electric guitar became an instrument of exquisite and focused terror. With Samson at the stool, the drum-kit was an implement of near-barbaric commotion. If there was a way to beam our evolutionary ancestors to the present day and show them roughly how to hold a string over a fret, the resulting din would not be entirely unlike a typical US Maple song. Wilfully primitive to the point of idiosyncrasy, their sound was punctuated by baffling stretches of dissonance extended over unbearably tense periods of time before abruptly falling into schizoid herky-jerky rhythms which were no less uncomfortable to behold. Bipolar, frenetic and occasionally downright belligerent in the live arena, US Maple were the living, breathing, sweating, wheezing and hissing embodiment of deconstructionist art made flesh, bone, wood and wire. Johnson circled and snatched at his mic-stand in the manner of a gin-soaked, syphilitic transient from an absurdist Vonnegutian yarn. His nigh-impenetrable vocal delivery was not so much an instrument as a supplement – an accentuation of his band-mates’ untidy and tumultuous racket. Across five albums of fluctuating brilliance, US Maple created a body of work that was both original and enormously compelling.

In some ways, the debut record Long Hair in Three Stages is the most profound statement of US Maple’s recording career. Together with fellow Chicagoan Jim O’Rourke, the quartet managed to create a sound which hangs perfectly between sublime rock minimalism and unabashed avant garde experimentation. The tribal stomping of Samson’s drums provides a much-needed sense of rhythmic propulsion but seldom finds any real consistency, which in turn lends the music a wild, untenable quality. In the liner notes, Shippy and Rittman are credited with ‘High’ and ‘Low’ guitar respective of their subtly different tunings. Their gruff, metallic tones tinkle and drone in imperfect unison and for the most part either guitarist seems content to lull at the opposite end of the spectrum, nagging and gnawing at the limits of any perceived song structure that occasionally coalesces from amongst the chattering frenzy of white noise. In these moments of luminous cohesion a peculiar sense of harmony reluctantly splutters into life, lending credence to the notion that these songs are actually carefully orchestrated despite their roots in free improvisation. Once this concept clicks, it’s surprisingly easy to draw comparisons from the past. Captain Beefheart’s passion for elasticised rhythmic devices, locked grooves and fanatically well-drilled execution are undoubtedly the closest reference point to US Maple but there is also a recognisable kinship with The Fall’s underrated sophomore long-player Dragnet.

The opening ‘Hey King’ barely fumbles out of the doorway before falling headlong down an enormous flight of stairs. Samson and Rittman create a sagging, laconic low-end foundation as Shippy’s guitar fires up a whirling dervish of sound before luring Rittman into a duel at the very ceiling of the audio stratosphere. After forty seconds of histrionics, the duo also scour the absolute depths for good measure. Sure enough, some three minutes in the band suddenly chances upon something resembling a conventional song structure and lurch forward into an infectious groove. This fervour continues into the following ‘Letter to ZZ Top’, an uncharacteristically affable track that even boasts a chorus of sorts. “Give my bones to Billy Gibbons,” hisses Johnson in apparent sincerity. The reference is fitting – the following tracks crackle with a southern-fried exuberance, especially during the demented chooglin’ of ‘Magic Job’. When the band pick up some pace on ‘The State is Bad’, the phantom harmonics become at once overwhelming and utterly invigorating. Shippy’s guitar is suddenly everywhere in the mix, running out of every free nook and cranny all at once. Jim O’Rourke’s treatment of Johnson’s vocals is excellent, capturing every carnal grunt and sudden exhale with loving detail. Economical use of double-tracking and panning grants a surprising amount of mileage to Johnson’s range. After several listens, the initial perplexity fades to a distant memory and a genuine sense of song-craft appears. US Maple are the audio equivalent of a magic eye picture. That which originally seems to be deliberately esoteric nonsense is actually carefully and intricately tailored to present a tangible image within an image. The unapproachable musique concrète is an elaborate façade to throw people off from an avowed adoration of all things primal within the beating heart of rock’n’roll.

The idea of catharsis is over-played in the spectrum of musical appreciation. The juxtaposition of dross, juvenile lyrical poeticisms over dour, repetitive music can hardly be considered cathartic in the classical definition of the word. A true cathartic experience comes when life catches you totally off guard. There is nothing safe or predictable in those moments of high comedy or abrupt sadness that can only be achieved during an instance of legitimate surprise. The giddy realisation that comes when you are suddenly dealt a hand without precedent and you don’t know whether to giggle or sob. These unique moments of unforeseen trauma were the currency of US Maple at their absurdist best. Their music seized the fertile ground within these unexpected epiphanies that come to shape and mould our character. The fundamental awkwardness and embarrassment that inevitably transpires when we are moved beyond our personal comfort zone is in many ways the truest representation of ourselves. When all traces of pretence or affectation are dispensed with and we are left completely vulnerable to outside influence. Sometimes the most affecting art is that which serves to reminds us of this feeling of exposure, a portable souvenir of a fleeting moment where our pants were down and a lesson was learned. Within these fluke snatches of discovery we realise that confusion really is sex and there’s a world of experience we are yet to encounter, well outside and beyond our private comfort zone. US Maple were all of these things to me and perhaps one day they will be the same to you.

Tommy Dski

Black Mountain - 'In The Future'

It's often tough to tell whether the haze shrouding a Black Mountain song is from the smoky organ, the blazing guitar or the, er, liberal musicians themselves. Their self-titled 2005 record was basically somewhere between a campfire singalong and a gigantic tribute to early, blues-based Led Zep, with a constant grin on its face even during stompers like "Don't Run Our Hearts Around." As debuts go, it was pretty striking, and it conveyed a real love of the blues-rock of the early seventies.

Here, Stephen McBean and his motley company have moved further into riffs, organs and latter-day Bonham beats, that perpetually stoned metal of the late seventies. Check out that 7/4 groove on "Stormy High," man. What a way to kick off a record. It's four minutes of riff, build, riff, build, riff, build, with organs and histrionic vocals cresting atop monolith guitars, with a rigid military chant. God, you can feel the shag carpet and lava lamps, if you listen hard enough. It fits into that long-haired aesthetic so well that you couldn't pick that cover out of a lineup of Hipgnosis illustrations.

Sure, there are moments reminiscent of the first record, but there's something new with all of them. The string-and-synth embellishments on "Angels" lend it a prog-rock excess grandeur, but one that knows where to draw the line, one that knows that it's supposed to create majesty and not just show off how rich or cultured Black Mountain are, and it's balanced by spare, martial verses. "Stay Free" is a return to the occasional folk of the debut, I guess, especially referencing the "fire in the sky" from Druganaut; however, it's closer to bassist Matt Camirand's alt-country act Blood Mountain, with its slide guitar and slow-dance aesthetic.

But those moments bleed into wicked psychedelics and occult chords. Moments that would feel goofy on any other record just make you nod or bang your head a little more on this one. Songs are huge epics and quiet elegies simultaneously. Amber Webber's tortured alto sears across this record, leaving vast swathes darkened permanently. When they want to tower, they tower; "Tyrants," for example, or the absolutely unstoppable sixteen-minute "Bright Lights," easily the high point of the album by simply being so Goddamn determined to knock in your skull.

That sixteen-minute song, by the way? Its size and its juxtaposition with the 1:43 "Wild Wind" makes it probably the quickest way to point out that at this point Black Mountain hardly care about song structure, at least in the traditional sense. Where the last record was playful in tune and in tone, this record is mischievious in its approach to the layout of its songs. Hardly a chorus to be found here; instead, we've got verses that lead into different parts that lead into different verses. Coupled with the spacious self-production on the record, it sounds more like a deep-cave pagan ritual in a Hammer flick turned out to be a jam session.

It's not as cheesy as that sounds, though. It's a record of genuine pathos, genuine longing and genuine energy. Most importantly, though, it's an album in the truest sense of the word: a collection of songs oriented in a similar direction in order to pursue a single aural goal, the towering monolith sound of heavy rock that came before it.

And here's the crux of it. I checked the Wikipedia just to confirm Webber's last name, and I saw this:

"The band is closely influenced by many past artists, and criticisms often walk the line between praising adept imitation and blasting blatant re-use of old ideas."

The fuck? Yeah, you can hear a number of rock touchstones in their music, but come on. This record is a monolith, a giant that can stand up with Zep, Floyd, Young, Sabbath, even more underground psychedelic rock masters like Hawkwind. Black Mountain take all those sounds, put them into a blender, set the thing on high, take what comes out and then collectively they smoke the hell out of it. The result is something that's imbued through and through with the aesthetics of those bands but sounds unique and compelling, made with a passion for the creation of something new as well as an admiration for those bands that came before. The gorgeous closer "Night Walks" brings you out of that pagan ritual into warm sunlight and confirms this: In The Future is its own record. Don't underestimate it just because it has its idols.

Xiu Xiu- Women As Lovers*

Track breakdown as I listen for the first time:

Track 1- I Do What I Want, When I Want: I'm digging this so far. Reserved, meandering lyrics and hip-hop beats with simple melodies orchestrated in what seems to be Xiu Xiu's "typical" neo-Dada style. It's like a Postal Service track only with all the twee rusted through.

Track 2- In Lust You Can Hear The Axe Fall: Oh hey, there are all the vocal histrionics that got left out of track one. The live drumming is pretty sweet- is the dude from Deerhoof drumming on this one? Jamie's vocals are kind of overwhelming in the loud parts. The quiet, almost-jazzy sections are really nice. I'm hearing a lot of gamelan influence in this record so far. Track outro convinces me that the loud sections work better without Jamie wailing over them.

Track 3- F.T.W.: Xiu Xiu's version of a Goo Goo Dolls song. What the hell? Oh man the chimes at 1:15 are pretty. More of that gamelan influence, then FFHSSHSHSH BSZZZZRTTTT synth freakout. Jamie's lyrics are getting more abstract. He's using his lower register more, which is good, and not pushing his upper register as hard, which is also good. This track devolves into a Books song at the end.

Track 4- No Friend Oh!: This is probably the closest thing to a single you'd expect from this record. Super-poppy chorus (by Xiu Xiu standards). Also Caralee is singing! Hooray, I like it when she sings. Yeah, if you chopped down the bridge this'd be a single, for sure. The fucked up horns are pretty great. The drums on this record are totally different from anything Xiu Xiu's done before. I like them a lot.

Track 5- Guantanamo Canto: Political song ahoy! It's pretty preachy. I agree with what they're saying, though. Is it even possible to write a song about human rights without getting preachy? This is still better than most U2. The torrent of words towards the end is compelling.

Track 6- Under Pressure (Feat. Michael Gira): XIU XIU BOWIE/QUEEN COVER OMGHSGLHUALUBGALUHLAGLUH4LHALCUH4LTHLHSL4UH4LCSH49AH93PATAHBGK

Track 7- Black Keyboard: I'm still kind of twitching over track 6. The guitars on this song are really, really pretty. I wish I wrote three-guitar parts like that. So far this is the most La Foret-esque track on the record. It's a lot more developed, to my ears, than anything on that album though. Typical Jamie: freaky TMI non-sequitir 2/3 of the way through.

Track 8- Master of the Bump (Kurt Stumbaugh, I Can Feel the Soil Falling Over My Head): This sounds like a demo tape. Really pretty vocal melody. Don't tell Jamie his dancing is effeminate. WAUGH guitar solo out of nowhere, pushed way high in the mix.

Track 9- You Are Pregnant, You Are Dead: More super-rad drumming. I love that one-mic Flaming Lips drum sound. This one's really riffy and jazzy! Maybe my favorite track on the record.

Track 10- The Leash: Man, this one is a mess (not necessarily in a bad way). Kind of gothy, once the bass kicks in.

Track 11- Child At Arms: My guess is the whistling is meant to be a Boy Scouts parody. This one's about child soldiers in Africa. Dark dark dark dark. Nightmarish ending.

Track 12- Puff and Bunny: From war-atrocity horror to mopey navel-gazing. This is what some people love about Xiu Xiu and some people hate.

Track 13- White Nerd: "R U TALKING ABOUT XIU XIU'S AUDIENCE??? LOL" This is pretty slick, actually. More goth-pop along the lines of "The Leash." Vocal treatments straight out of Knife Play. Jamie Stewart to white nerds everywhere: you let us down.

Track 14- Gayle Lynn: BIG ROCK DRUMHITS. Another Xiu Xiu song about someone dying alone. Sad, sad ending.

Overall initial impressions: positive. This album feels a lot more scattered than their last two, as it stretches to both cover all the Xiu Xiu bases and try some new things. The production and instrumentation are great, the drumming in particular being excellent. I'm not sure how well it flows as a cohesive whole, but each song is strong. That Bowie/Queen cover was TOTALLY UNEXPECTED, and awesome. If you like Xiu Xiu you will probably enjoy this record, as it is a pretty good Xiu Xiu record. I think The Air Force is still my favorite, but this one could definitely grow on me.

The Lowest Of The High-Profile: Some Albums That Got Lost

2007 seemed like it was a pretty big year for records, and a lot of records that in other years probably would have emerged with a much higher profile got left by the wayside. Even records that did wind up being remembered come late December - and here I'm looking right at you, Dirty Projectors - felt like nobody had actually really listened to them. These are albums that deserved a lot more listening and talking than they wound up getting.

Wax Mannequin - Orchard & Ire
It's not really correct to say that Wax Mannequin (really named Chris Adeney, but don't tell him that) is under the radar; instead, he seems to live in a place where radar doesn't even operate. 2003's The Price was an absolute masterwork of punchy rock hooks speckled with jazz, electronica and moments of delicate bliss. Orchard & Ire, half of which had previously appeared in a rougher form on 2006's Orchard EP, doesn't top The Price, but not much can. Instead, Wax's new record strives to match the balance of fist-pumping rock'n'roll and tender, subtle balladry that made The Price so great, and it largely acheives this.

Orchard & Ire has a nearly cinematic pace to it, and that helps. The triple-gut-punch of the first three songs ("Animals Jump," "Robots, Master And Lady" and "Price Paid") nearly match the same sequence on the previous album, going so far as to reference the mythology of that record. "You And All Your Friends" does the same, visiting the medical motif on The Price once more over a martial 6/8 beat. Nearly-Celtic "Everything Proper" fits neatly between the quiet, folksy "Animals Come Home" and the low-key atmospherics of "Almost Everyone," then let loose as Wax goes for broke over the last three tracks. It's a journey that careens between Bruckheimer explosions and Kubrick slow-burn, and in the end it's a thoroughly rewarding one.

Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
Phantom Punch was released really early in the year with relatively little fanfare - in fact, it's safe to say that it was likely overshadowed by Lerche's soundtrack for Steve Carrell's Dan In Real Life. It's a shame, really. One track of deceptive jazz-pop starts Lerche off in a familiar frame of mind for folks who caught his last record with the Faces Down Quartet (and the aforementioned soundtrack), but when "The Tape" kicks in with a bruised guitar barking in the right channel's distance, the record title rings true.

Lerche suddenly emerges as the sort of suave rock'n'roll frontman whose attitude belies the energy churning beneath the music's surface; while the pop sensibilities of Two Way Monologue and the jazzy phrasing and rhythm of Duper Sessions remain intact, there is a new vitality to his work. "The Tape," "Face The Blood" and the title track are startlingly close in both style and quality to early Elvis Costello, while "John, Let Me Go" and "Say It All" are distinct strummed pop songs that hearken back to Faces Down and Two-Way Monologue, touched up with the flames that singe the edges of the whole album. Finally, there is the long and surprising shoegaze drone of "Happy Birthday Girl," an eight-minute build to a stunning and dissonant climax. It's another in the long line of surprises that Lerche builds up over this album, and hopefully an indication that he's nowhere near the last trick up his Scandanavian sleeve.

Softlightes - Say No To Being Cool, Say Yes To Being Happy
I don't know as much about Softlightes as I do most of these other bands. From what I understand, the core members were in another band that titled their final song or record "Become The Softlightes." Either way, it was a good move on their part. Say No To Being Cool, Say Yes To Being Happy is possibly the most straightforward record on this list. If you are into cute, upbeat pop music that has had computers cheekily applied to it in various ways, this record delivers. The reason I'm including it here as opposed to a lot of other records that could have occupied the same spot is that it just delivers really Goddamn well.

Lead and possibly only single "Heart Made Of Sound," besides having a music video bordering on precious, marries a twinkly and jangly piano-and-guitar melody to buoyant, harmonized vocals and communal shouts of "Hey!" Vocoder appears in "The Robots In My Room Were Playing Arena Rock," the title of which is accurate enough to the extent that robots, bigger drums and electric guitar were involved, but I'm going to assume that like me you were sold by the first two words in this sentence and the rest are simply a bonus. A few songs touch on the dreamy work of Ivy and Tahiti 80 in as compelling a way as the songs which are uniquely and fantastically Softlightes. The only real umbrage to be taken with this record is that it would have been even better if it had ended at the reprise of "Heart Made Of Sound," but instead it carries on for an additional two tracks, both of which are lamentably titled ("If The World Had Cookies" and "Black Skinheads In White Pants," which is at least fittingly nerve-rattling). Thankfully, that's more of an issue of sequencing than it is quality.

Joel Plaskett Emergency - Ashtray Rock
Pitchfork is equally loved and reviled in the music hobbyist community that has developed on the Internet in this decade, and both sides have legit reasons for their stances. The big issue is that often the publication manages to do something right and something wrong in the same breath. Case in point: in announcing who won this year's Polaris Prize, their headline was "Polaris Prize Goes to Arcad-- WTF? Patrick Watson?!" They then acted all surprised that Patrick Watson was the panel's choice for best Canadian record of the year, like Pfork had their finger on the pulse of Canadian music.

Yeah, well, where were you on this one, motherfuckers?

Frankly, I was absolutely stunned when speculation over Polaris' contenders hardly strayed to this record. It's a stunning, semi-autobiographical concept album about love for one woman tearing bandmates apart. They go so far as playing a song from Plaskett's old band, Thrush Hermit, members of which will apparently recognize elements of themselves in the album's narrative. It doesn't entirely need it; after all, it's tough to argue with the strut of "Drunk Teenagers," the goofball synth and enormous power chords of "Fashionable People," the palpable regret and bitterness driving "Nothin' More To Say." There is a moment, however, when mouths tend to drop when listening to this record, and it's a simple seven-note motif that slackens the jaws. It's woven in finely but it merely serves to signify many strands running throughout. The album holds together well with just the clever pop and rock-worship that makes up most of Plaskett's discography, but is even stronger with the level of self-reference contained within and the singluar vision that drives Ashtray Rock to a point of remarkable cohesion.

Future Of The Left - Curses
Confession: I use iTunes. Heathen in such an age of vinyl to suggest that I so much as look at .mp3's, I know, and even worse to use a player that so strongly represents poseurism, but it's easy enough for me to use and it has a dandy little search function up in the top corner. That's how I listen to tunes when I'm using the computer, for the most part, and I'm definitely writing this lengthy screed on the computer right now. By accident, I had caps lock on when searching for this record, meaning that by the time I realized it I had looked up the record CURSES.

How fitting. CURSES. CURSES. CURSES! It's such a pummelling monolith of a record. To suggest that it rises from the ashes of Mclusky is to suggest that the two members of Mclusky present in this band had to at one point stop being on fire, and though their final record as that other band implied otherwise this was clearly not the case. Here they are, scorching and raging and blistering and tearing down everything in their path. Curses is glorious in its capacity for violence, shredding traditional guitar sounds on "Plague Of Onces" and somehow making a Roland keyboard visceral on "Manchasm" and "Team:Seed." Yes, you've probably noticed, Andy Falkous' knack for a title remains intact with songs like "Fuck The Countryside Alliance" and "Real Men Hunt In Packs," and his utterly bizarre imagery comes part and parcel with that. It would be nothing, though, without the remarkable talent of Jack Egglestone and Kelson Mathias coalescing in an absolutely ferocious rhtyhm section. Yet hooks, riffs and singalongs all appear here in full force, and the songwriting reaches its apex on the strikingly subtle ballad that closes out the record, "The Contrarian."

Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls
Members of a great band come together to make the definitive record of their career and then break up. Story of our collective life, friends. So many excellent bands enter our lives this way. I guess if it's any consolation, that record for Electrelane was No Shouts, No Calls.

If you get past the 2:36 moment on this record, where Verity Susman's voice cracks while proclaiming with increasing urgency that, with you, she'll tear down "the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls, the walls" and your heart doesn't jump instantly into your throat to try and call something back to her, you're probably not going to be following this record. Ditto for the bittersweet harmonies that pop in mere moments later, or any of the motorik-meets-girl-group first half of this record. Perhaps you'll be sold by the second half, where folk swoons and faints from the dry heat of electric guitar jams. Here's hoping so, because once you've soaked the whole thing in this record captures the joy and terror of love and frames it perfectly within pop. That romantic strain running throughout the album seems set firmly before the fall of the Iron Curtain, using the methodology of East-West diplomacy in that time period as a deeper examination of relations of the heart. Dark nights, dark secrets and a light of hope that pierces it all. Electrelane were a smart band, and with any luck No Shouts, No Calls will endure as a reminder of that.

Coconut Records - Nighttiming
Hey, remember Phantom Planet? Yeah, those guys. Sang "California" which became the theme song for The O.C.? Little dude by the name of Jason Schwartzman did drums for them for a while, including that song about the Sunshine State. He left to focus on his acting career during the recording of their most recent album in 2004, but it didn't really go anywhere. So here he is with Nighttiming, an album that sometimes feels like it can't decide what to be but in the end just comes together as an excellent collection of twelve songs. That's not a bad thing to aspire to be.

Schwartzman starts off the record with "This Old Machine," a gorgeous lullaby duet with, of all people, Kirsten Dunst, who turns in a nice delicate whisper that suits the song perfectly. Cue the melancholy piano and strings of "West Coast," a song that slowly unravels into pomp and bombast on par with any of the more transcendent moments of Funeral. To tell the truth, the differences between the songs and the way they're sequenced are reminiscent of the A side and B side of an old single, and that's about par for the course for the rest of the album. Schwartzman covers a lot of ground with that format, though - the country sway of "Slowly" that sounds like Mike Nesmith's idiosyncratic solo work, the cutesy sixties pop swoon of "Easy Girl," the Weezerisms of "Back To You." And of course, that title track starts with a deceptively cocky strut but turns out surprisingly moody.

The thing about a record as diverse as this is that it can signify either artists losing track of where they're headed or artists doing things simply because they like doing them, and Coconut Records clearly falls under the latter category. It's nice to hear an album of well-done pop by someone who clearly loves well-done pop, and it's one of the best records of well-done pop that was released in 2007.

The Dirty Three: a retrospective, in three parts

Part 3: recent years

Writing about music is not the same as listening to music. Music writing is much more welcoming of the failures or the near misses, the albums or bands that try valiantly but don’t quite make it, or the artists or bands that just flat-out suck. Where the listener wil shun such works, the writer will often pounce on them with glee. Which is not to say that those of us who choose to write about music don’t appreciate the chance to spread the word about something we absolutely love, it’s just that you can’t do that all the time. It’s difficult. There are only so many ways you can say “this album is amazing” before it all starts to get a little repetitive. It’s a lot easier to write about the duds and the not-quites.

The Dirty Three have never released a dud album in their career, and only a very small handful of dud songs (almost all of them on their very first album, Sad and Dangerous). But in 2002 they found themselves reaching a “not-quite” moment. It was their first in rather a long time.

Over their previous three albums they’d steadily and unassumingly built up a body of work that saw them become arguably the best band on the planet – or the best that anybody had heard of, at any rate. So it’s easy to understand why they should want to continue in that same vein with their next album – but because they were continuing in that same vein, it’s easy to understand why they faltered.

The first thing to say about 2002’s She Has No Strings Apollo is that it’s not inherently a bad album. In fact it’s really quite a good album, and it’s tempting to ponder whether it would seem quite as disappointing as it does if it hadn’t had the misfortune of following up the stunning Whatever You Love, You Are. But really, that’s a fruitless line of inquiry: albums aren’t created in isolation, and the band must have known full well just how good Whatever You Love was and just how much of an effort it would be to provide it with a “worthy” follow-up.

So, standing next to that musical Everest, it’s not surprising that artistically She Has No Strings Apollo seems a little short-statured. There’s a lot of exciting stuff in there, but it’s hard for me to escape the feeling that for the first time in their discography the band were almost trying too hard: while the opening song, “Alice Wading”, is the most searching and adventurous track they’d recorded since perhaps “Indian Love Song” way back on the self-titled album, the second (almost-title) track “She Has No Strings” seems to be just grinding gears for most of its length. It’s exciting, sure, but it never quite builds to anything, certainly not the heights the band’s fans had by now become accustomed to. It’s a bit like listening to a high-powered car rev its engine: the excitement is all in the promise. But for all the effort put into the playing, the promise is never quite delivered; the car never quite starts.

As I said, this is not to suggest that She Has No Strings Apollo is not a good record. It is that; perhaps very good. If it was from any other band I’d probably be raving about it. But by this stage of their career the Dirty Three had built up such a weight of expectation that anything even slightly lacking seemed like a massive disappointment. If I could hear it in isolation I’d probably love it; indeed there are almost certainly times when I’ll put it on rather than any other of their albums. There are moments of almost stunning beauty, most notably the tiny, repetitive piano flourish on “Long Way To Go With No Punch”, and especially the way piano on that song flows in and out of the violin lines and then is finally given its own moment in the spotlight (both instruments, incidentally, were played by Warren Ellis); but if ever a Dirty Three album was going to sound like the band going through the motions, this was it. That those motions are so magnificent softens the blow somewhat, but not entirely. By this stage of their career the Dirty Three had been mining different aspects of the same seam for five albums; it was inevitable that even such fertile musical minds as those of Ellis, Turner, and White would eventually run out of, if not quite ideas, then at least enthusiasm. Of course, this is all just conjecture: apart from one wordless glance across a merch desk I’ve never met any of the members of the Dirty Three; I don’t generally read interviews with musicians; I don’t know what was in their heads and hearts when they recorded this album. I’m just a listener, and all I can comment on is what I hear. Other people, doubtless, will hear very different things from me. In She Has No Strings Apollo I hear weariness.

But we can forgive them for it. By that stage of their career the Dirty Three had recorded an incredible body of music. Anybody who has any interest in contemporary music should own copies of each of the Dirty Three’s albums from the self-titled through to Whatever You Love, You Are. Don’t stop there, though: there are some rarer gems that are well worth tracking down. One of these which I really can’t go without mentioning (and which somehow I managed to forget to mention last time around, all the same . . .) is Lowlands. Originally, like Sharks, released as a tour-only record (on the Whatever You Love tour), it was briefly available more generally but now seems to have dropped off the radar again, which is a great pity. The album is comprised of eight relatively short songs, many with a subtle country inflection to them; collectively they’re warm, and soft, and low-key and mellow. They were recorded from 1998-99, the same time that Ocean Songs was released, and that lineage is clearly visible: Lowlands is, you might say, the terra firma counterpart to Ocean Songs. However, the songs here generally lack the sometimes unsettling sense of isolation that marks Ocean Songs: these are gentle songs, songs of home and hearth, songs equally at home on a sunny day as on a rainy night. Only at the end, on the final two tracks “Time After” and “Irish Red”, do things get loud; everywhere else, this is the Dirty Three at their most relaxed and soothing – adjectives that are not always associated with the band.

Back to the timeline. Before Cinder came out in 2006, news that the Dirty Three were working on a new album was greeted warmly as a kind of a come-back: after all, after the thick ’n’ fast rush of albums in their first decade, the wait since She Has No Strings Apollo had been noticeably prolonged. But the band hadn’t really disappeared: if the fact that they were now living on different continents made it more difficult for Turner, Ellis, and White to collaborate as often as they had in the past, in many ways each of the men were more active than they ever had been, turning up in innumerable side-projects and contributing tirelessly to the music of their peers. And still finding the time to perform together occasionally, too – as demonstrated on the Live! At Meredith album, recorded in 2004.

That recording finds the band in a relaxed frame of mind, so much so that it’s sometimes a little jarring to those of us who remember the frantic descents into white noise that marked their earlier performances. There’s no feed-back here: just beautiful music. There’s also a typically entertaining example of one of Warren Ellis’s trademark idiosyncratic monologues that serve as introductions to and spurious explanations of the Dirty Three’s songs – in this case, a story about seeing James Brown in an airport that leads into a performance of “She Has No Strings”. “This is a song about taking your hat off to the great man, Mr. James Brown” Ellis claims – I guess when there aren’t any lyrics in your song, you can ascribe any explanation you want to them.

It’s a typically generous set, taking in songs from all stages of the band’s career – even if they do wait until near the end of the night before indulging the frequent pleads from the audience for “Everything’s Fucked”. If the recording demonstrates one thing, it’s that the Dirty Three have built up a body of work that is singular both in the sense of being unique, and in the sense that it’s all of a piece. The early songs aren’t put in the set purely as a sop to the fans; nor are the most recent songs there just to promote the latest record. The songs are all points on a continuum that has progressed with, despite the odd (very mild) hiccup, a fluidity and seamlessness that’s remarkable in popular music.

Which is not to say, of course, that all the music is absolutely identical. When the Dirty Three’s most recent album, Cinder, was released, it was perhaps not surprising that the vast majority of the critical attention paid to it concerned the fact that on one track, “Great Wave”, the Dirty Three were joined – for the first time, supposedly – by a singer. In fact, it wasn’t the first time that human voices had played a part in the band’s music: wordless singing can be heard in the background of a handful of songs in their back-catalogue, most memorably the screams that punctuate “Dirty Equation” from Dirty Three (another example of this continuous vein of singing in the Dirty Three’s repertoire appears on Cinder itself, in the form of Sally Timm’s contribution to “Feral”). But this singing had never been the traditional popular song style of singing: it’d never been at the forefront, never been the centre of attention. That changed with “Great Wave”.

Still, it’s a shame that “Great Wave” got so much attention, partly because it’s a little ridiculous to focus so much on one song from a collection of nineteen, but mainly because it’s one of the weaker songs on the album – and it’s certainly one of the weakest lyrics in Chan Marshall’s catalogue. As with the rendition of “Running Scared” with Nick Cave on the Sharks E.P., the Dirty Three do little more than provide standard band backing here, rarely taking a chance to branch out.

Still, perhaps that’s not surprising on an album that sees the band trying the most diverse range of styles they’d attempted since Sad and Dangerous. As with that very first album, some of attempts are better than others: the bagpipes and hard-driving rock ’n’ roll pulse of “Doris” aren’t as half exciting as they should be, certainly not as exciting as one of Warren Ellis’s ecstatic violin surges to the heavens. On the other hand “the Zither Player” (written by Félix Lajkó, according to the liner notes), gallops along at a great clip, the jangling mandolin that takes centre stage making the song sound for all the world like it should be accompanying footage of some desperate cross-country dash on horseback (with occasional stops for swashbucking). It’s a terrific performance, somehow managing to simultaneously generate feelings of deep seriousness and great fun.

And this is pretty much what the album’s like: a series of hits and misses, none of them particularly long and many of them surprisingly short. It seems more an album in the “scrapbook” sense of the world, a Dirty Three sampler of all the things they can do. It’s an exhaustingly long album and would almost certainly have been better twenty or thirty minutes shorter; it’s the Dirty Three’s weakest album since Sad and Dangerous, without the benefit of the doubt that that album gained from being their first – and yet, it’s a deeply fascinating and immeasurably promising album, too. Over the course of four records, from Dirty Three through Horse Stories and Ocean Songs to Whatever You Love, You Are, the band had been heading along a very particular course, but it was a course that proved on She Has No Strings Apollo to be a dead end. Cinder is the sound of the band turning the car around, checking the map, searching for another road to follow. It is, critically, the album on which the band seems to have realised that it’s time to move on and try to find new scenery to explore. Is it any wonder that the album’s so long, and has so many songs? One thing the Dirty Three manifestly does not suffer from is a lack of ideas. They music is still gushing out of Warren Ellis, Mick Turner, and Jim White. They put it all right there on Cinder, good and ill, strong and weak, strange and familiar.

So Cinder is not the sound of the band starting to lose it, as so many feared when it was released: rather, it’s the sound of a band that has too much of “it”, and just needs to figure out what to keep and what to throw out. Just like at the beginning. Ellis, Turner, and White are too intelligent not to know when things need to be shaken up. Cinder cast rays of light in all directions: the future for the Dirty Three looks bright.