Dirty Three – The Village

Inuit Bikini Scarlet Carwash records my life, but not contemporanaeously. Thus it was a while ago that I went to this concert. You know the Dirty Three, they are these three Australian guys who never wash and (unlike so many of their countrymen) they also make music together. It has been a while since they last played here, possibly because Warren Ellis has been busy with the comics and playing with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. In the meantime he has grown a beard oddly reminiscent of that of cockfarming Irish journalist John Waters. Fortunately he did not see fit to entertain us with gibberings about how feminists have taken over the world and enslaved men.

So yeah, the music… more of the same really, if you are familiar with the Dirty Three. Ellis plays fiddle, some other guy plays guitar, and the band’s powerhouse plays drums. The whole thing has an air of Appalachians go Jazz to it, a process aided by the sudden appearance of support act Josh Pearson, who joined them on banjo. Mr Pearson has the kind of beard not seen since the death of Stonewall Jackson, and boasts an austere manner to match. I was sorry to have arrived too late to have caught his act.

You are never alone with the Dirty Three, they say, and indeed the place was a bit crowded. Afterwards we repaired to Devitts for pints, and Dave’s friend Jan (yeah?) regaled us with anecdotes about this guy who used to eat raw white pudding while talking about what he had seen on Jalfrezi TV the night before. You had to be there, and it is the worse for you that you were not. Jan was from near Trim. Co. Meath, so we asked her for the inside track on Jimmy Ben-nett and "Fatal Deviation".