CD review: Dirty Three’s ‘Toward the Low Sun’

By Spencer Patterson

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 | 5:04 p.m.

The Details

Dirty Three

Toward the Low Sun

Australian trio Dirty Three emerges from its seven-year recording hiatus with pent-up intensity on “Furnace Skies,” the leadoff track on eighth album Toward the Low Sun. The violin/drums/electric guitar combo has spoken clearly without words since the mid-’90s, and seems to be shouting, “We’re back—on our terms” on the intense opening workout.

That means D3 occasionally ditches its typically creeping post-rock for a forceful pseudo-psychedelic approach (“That Was Was”). It means that Warren Ellis’ familiar violin sometimes give way to a haunting piano as the dominant instrument (“Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone,” “Ashen Snow”). And it means that when Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White return to their norms (“The Pier,” “Rain Song,” “You Greet Her Ghost”), those songs, too, catch our attention.

What it doesn’t mean: that Dirty Three is any less hypnotic in 2012 than it was in 2000. Or that when those dirges hit their highs, your heart won’t well with feeling the way it always has.