There is something cryptic about The Dirty Three. A band made up out of a classically trained violinist, a guitarist with a predilection for drone and noise, and a drummer who would sometimes rather play with a mallet or a baby rattle than with boring old drumsticks, is not the sort of people you'd expect to even come together to make music, let alone get along to their sixth studio album. Yet, here they are, and they're going as strong as ever.

If you're having trouble imagining what sort of music is on this record, and I don't blame you, then perhaps thinking of a band like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai, removing a lot of the pretension and adding a fair splash of folk-rock sound and inventiveness. However, they have a lot of similarities otherwise, in their occasional penchant for minimalism, and their uncanny ability to move from 0 to 100 in one song. If you still can't picture it, then you probably should go and download some of their music (for trial purposes only, of course!) and see for yourself, because any verbal description that I give is going to be slightly off the mark.

"She Has No Strings Apollo" features a lot less formless cacophony than their breakthrough album "Ocean Songs", but still retains the other great features of that record, such as an ability to constantly and unpredictably change their tempo and make it sound good, and added a dash of variety to keep things interesting. The album's opener, Alice Wading, splutters along sounding decidedly amateurish, yet also very cool at the same time. The title track is much more traditional though, floating along ethereally, and also featuring occasional bursts of heavy guitar. Long Way To Go takes the unusual step for this band of experimenting with piano sounds, and the result is most agreeable. No Stranger To That is a song that would no doubt sound great live, mixing a sombre and slow part with an aggressive, attacking part.

Now that I've blabbered and enthusiastically praised the record, I have to share a couple of the downsides. Long Way To Go is a song that starts off well, but never gets off the ground. It sounds like the band had one good idea, two exquisite sounding chords situated next to each other, but couldn't think of anything to put with it. It's a shame, because the beautiful potential with this song goes to waste. Also, there are only seven tracks, which is a bit of a let-down. Surely the band could have come up with at least three more tunes to knock the album over the ten-track mark?

Even with it's flaws, this is still a very good album that will, most likely, go criminally underappreciated. It's summed up nicely in it's last track, which starts off with mournful percussion dirges, and then somehow inexplicably switches to crunching distorted powerchords. You never know what you're going to get with this record, and that is a fine quality indeed for it to have. If you don't know about this band, this is the perfect place to start. And if you're already a committed fan, you can't go wrong with this disc.

There is something cryptic about The Dirty Three. A band made up out of a classically trained violinist, a guitarist with a predilection for drone and noise, and a drummer who would sometimes rather play with a mallet or a baby rattle than with boring old drumsticks, is not the sort of people you'd expect to even come together to make music, let alone get along to their sixth studio album. Yet, here they are, and they're going as strong as ever.

If you're having trouble imagining what sort of music is on this record, and I don't blame you, then perhaps thinking of a band like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai, removing a lot of the pretension and adding a fair splash of folk-rock sound and inventiveness. However, they have a lot of similarities otherwise, in their occasional penchant for minimalism, and their uncanny ability to move from 0 to 100 in one song. If you still can't picture it, then you probably should go and download some of their music (for trial purposes only, of course!) and see for yourself, because any verbal description that I give is going to be slightly off the mark.

"She Has No Strings Apollo" features a lot less formless cacophony than their breakthrough album "Ocean Songs", but still retains the other great features of that record, such as an ability to constantly and unpredictably change their tempo and make it sound good, and added a dash of variety to keep things interesting. The album's opener, Alice Wading, splutters along sounding decidedly amateurish, yet also very cool at the same time. The title track is much more traditional though, floating along ethereally, and also featuring occasional bursts of heavy guitar. Long Way To Go takes the unusual step for this band of experimenting with piano sounds, and the result is most agreeable. No Stranger To That is a song that would no doubt sound great live, mixing a sombre and slow part with an aggressive, attacking part.

Now that I've blabbered and enthusiastically praised the record, I have to share a couple of the downsides. Long Way To Go is a song that starts off well, but never gets off the ground. It sounds like the band had one good idea, two exquisite sounding chords situated next to each other, but couldn't think of anything to put with it. It's a shame, because the beautiful potential with this song goes to waste. Also, there are only seven tracks, which is a bit of a let-down. Surely the band could have come up with at least three more tunes to knock the album over the ten-track mark?

Even with it's flaws, this is still a very good album that will, most likely, go criminally underappreciated. It's summed up nicely in it's last track, which starts off with mournful percussion dirges, and then somehow inexplicably switches to crunching distorted powerchords. You never know what you're going to get with this record, and that is a fine quality indeed for it to have. If you don't know about this band, this is the perfect place to start. And if you're already a committed fan, you can't go wrong with this disc.