Whatever You Love, You Are

1	Some Summers They Drop Like Flys 6:20
2	I Really Should've Gone out Last Night 6:55
3	I Offered It up to the Stars & The Night Sky 13:41
4	Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know 6:07
5	Steller 7:29
6	Lullabye for Christie 7:45

Barnes & Noble

If the principle behind scat singing is that the human voice can imitate various instruments, the Dirty Three function on the inverse idea: that an instrument -- in their case, the violin -- can sing just as passionately as a voice can. The Australian trio's fifth album is a breathtaking collection of songs that illustrate that fact more powerfully than the band ever has. D3 used to record their songs live in the studio, without any overdubs. But on Whatever You Love, they've opted to layer additional tracks into the mix, so that where violinist Warren Ellis used to play just one melody, he now adds other "voices" into the lament. The earlier albums were filled with tortured narratives, but the songs on Whatever are like elegiac conversations between miserable lovers. On "Some Summers They Drop Like Flys," Ellis makes a languorously bowed tune sound even more doleful by counterposing it against a series of sprightly, plucked notes. Guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White provide the gentle accompaniment to Ellis's playing, hanging suitably far in the background while crafting beautiful atmospherics of their own. The band's interest in making these songs into real stories (live, Ellis launches into an extended anecdote to introduce each tune) is for the first time accurately represented by their titles: names like "I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night" and "Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know." Because they're all quite similar, you may not need to own every Dirty Three record, but if you haven't built a collection yet, this is undeniably the place to start. Jenny Eliscu

All Music Guide

The Dirty Three have created their own brand of violin-infused rock and carry this torch of innovation even further with Whatever You Love, You Are. There are some characteristic Dirty Three moments on this album; the final song "Lullaby for Christie" would have fit in perfectly on their first self-titled album. The song swoons and breaks with a delicate yet powerful melody. There are some key explorations on this album that, even if they don't always succeed, depict a band that is far from comfortable with the status quo. "I Offered It up to the Stars and the Night Sky" experiments with overlapping violin tracks and ends up sounding more like a chamber work by Steve Reich than the Dirty Three. Although it's not the album's most listenable song, it sounds incredibly different than anything else the band has done. Another new direction for the band is in terms of production; much of the album contains overdubs and has a much smoother, but not always better, sound. Perhaps the only aspect of Whatever You Love that is lacking is the rough "live" sound that the other albums have had. The production takes away from some of the band's spontaneity but also allows it to refine the subtleties of their sound. Hopefully, with time, the Dirty Three will be able to fuse their rough-edged sound with technological advancements to achieve a perfect synthesis. Marc Gilman