Dirty Three light up stage and sky at Vivid rock show

Every three years or so a rock music phenomenon appears like a speeded up comet when Dirty Three put on a gig and this year they lit up the Opera House from inside.

Dirty Three performing at Sydney Opera House for the Vivid 2019 festival. Picture: Prudence Upton

• On the road again
• Classical Marsalis masterclass
• Arlo’s blast from the past
• Damien Rice pulls strings

Every three years or so a rock music phenomenon appears like a speeded up comet when Melbourne band Dirty Three put on a gig.

Fronted by the charismatic multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, they play only instrumentals with the unusual line up of electric violin, Mick Turner’s electric guitar and Joe White’s drums. Their fans are legion and loyal to the core, so when they put on one of their rare super-energetic shows at Sydney Opera House — “the most beautiful venue on planet earth” in Ellis’s words — the concert hall was lit up with excitement, just as the harbour outside was lit up for Vivid.

The set was a re-creation of their eponymous 1994 album, performed in the same order and with the same feeling they produced 25 years ago — even down to two songs with harmonica from Tony Wyzenbeek who played on the album.

Ellis turned his amped up violin into a wailing rock machine, kicking out a leg, stepping on chairs and leaping across stage. At times he was a Pete Townshend, at others a Jimi Hendrix, even down to throwing away his bow and playing the fiddle with his teeth!

COLOUR

Behind him White, together with Ellis a former member of the Black Eyed Susans, presided over his drum kit, tambourines and various percussion instruments like a benevolent wizard, with big grand gestures and always doing something interesting.

Off to the side, like the painter he is, Turner is the quiet centre of the trio, adding subtle dashes of colour with his understated guitar, often with an off-kilter finger-picking style that bends time signatures.

They last played at the 2016 Sydney Festival, but whenever they get together on stage something magical happens. The unexpected is always an element but this is music in the moment, which builds into an exciting journey, taking the audience along with it. Ellis teases, quips and entertains with anecdotes between numbers — the formula is irresistible.

The Dirty Three album with its seven tracks is a multi-headed beast. The opener Indian Love Song starts innocently enough with some gently plucked notes from the fiddle, but Turner’s heavily distorted guitar takes over, with him kneeling in front of his Fender amp to get feedback. Wyzenbeek’s harmonica cuts through the growing storm before White goes off on a solo like steam locomotive rattling down the tracks.

Better Go Home Now has a catchy fiddle riff while Odd Couple features Ellis on piano accordion while Turner’s guitar modulates between two chords. “Accordion was my first instrument and my worst instrument. First picked one up off a rubbish tip when I was nine,” Ellis explained.

Kim’s Dirt, written by their friend Kim Salmon, was recorded in a kitchen with just one amp and they grabbed and played anything that could make a note. Hence space belts — plastic tubing with an open bell which produces a humming note when you whirl it (think Bonzo Dog Band) — and kalimba, a small Afro-Caribbean finger piano, were used.

Everything’s F***ed produced some ecstatic drumming from White and Dirty Equation — “dedicated to anybody who is going home to a whole lot of trouble tonight” — brought the set to a rollicking breakneck finale.

But this was a three-hour show and there was still time for some classics from the 1996 Horse Years album One and a last offering, Jaguar, from their first album — also from 1994 — Sad and Dangerous, which started it all.

Let’s hope they return to the stage again — even if we do have to wait another three years.

VIVID

● CONCERT: Dirty Three

● WHERE: Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

● WHEN: Sunday, May 26