On
She Has No Strings Apollo
,
the Dirty Three
again offer up the sounds of their hearts and inner landscapes to the skies and whoever's listening. The band's tendency to start a song quiet, loose, and lovely and then slowly sweat it into a faster, intensified crescendo is familiar by now, but somehow remains vividly evocative. The emotional road from heartbreak and regret, expressed through beating music with wailing violin (
"Alice Wading"
), to feeling lost, heard in a song's slow unraveling (
"She Lifted the Net"
), and back again is part of humanity's oldest story, and is a tale that violinist
Warren Ellis
, guitarist
Mick Turner
, and drummer
Jim White
are good at telling. If you are a fan of
's past expressions, you'll be moved by their sound again as they relay new wordless tales of woe, sadness, and things past. Worth noting: The quieter, reflective pieces like
"Long Way to Go With No Punch"
deliver moments of reprieve, and bass guitar (played by
Turner
) is heard for the first time on a
Dirty Three
album since 1994's
Sad & Dangerous
. ~ Joslyn Layne