Live Review: Dirty Three

The queue to enter the Odeon Theatre went around the block; a rabble of men and women who’d dressed up for the occasion by wearing their darker denims. 

Warren Ellis is a theatrical frontman – the band were playing two gigs back to back, this matinee he described as "afternoon tea with the Dirty Three". Obligingly he stripped from his plum-coloured cardigan into a suit jacket and vainly attempted to tuck in his shirt, drummer Jim White hamming up his kicks and fist pumps with rolls on the snare while guitarist Mick Turner looked on unconcerned.

As promised, the band played their self-titled 1994 album, as well as a couple of favourites from Horse Stories. Ellis explained that when they started out they only had three songs: "We had to make the tracks long, that’s the secret to being a progressive-rock band, and to convince yourself that you’re awesome."

And awesome they were – for nearly three hours the band nursed the audience, from the jittery driving outset of Indian Love Song strung out to a glorious 20 minutes, to the tender ballads of Kim’s Dirt and Everything’s Fucked, the band howled and raged. Tony Wyzenbeek on harmonica joined the trio for The Last Night before the final onslaught of Dirty Equation, a song where Mick Turner’s driving repetitive guitar tethered the band as Jim White’s drum sticks blurred to a phenomenal rhythm. Warren Ellis, hunching over his violin and working the bow 'til the horse hair frayed and the tendrils looked like an extension of his own wispy mane, dropped to his knees and brought the gig to its final, distorted, mind-bending climax.