I've been gradually building up my Dirty Three collection over a number of years now. I first heard of them when I saw a screening of the All Tomorrow's Parties film in London - there was a clip of them playing at a previous festival and they looked incredible; they played with such passion and power that it blew me away. I figured if I could be that impressed by them on a film, then I'd enjoy them even more live. They were playing at an ATP I was going to shortly thereafter, so I bought a copy of Ocean Songs on cd to listen to in advance. I'll write about that album another time, but I became a big fan of the band and have seen them a bunch of times since. Every time I see them play, I remember how much I love this band.
For a while, I was gradually buying their albums on cd but decided a while ago that I'd actually quite like to have them all on vinyl - a lot of the more recent ones aren't hard to come by but are often a little pricey. The last few Record Store Days, Bella Union have been reissuing some of the earlier ones which will make the collection much easier to complete. This year they reissued Sad & Dangerous, Dirty Three's first album. A few days before the list of RSD releases came out, I'd found a copy of Sad & Dangerous on cd and, thinking it'd be hard to find on vinyl, bought it to add to my collection. I'd never seen the cd around before and it'd been a while since I'd added any Dirty Three albums so I was pretty excited (the cd I found was the Torn & Frayed Australian release, which already has two more songs than the original LP release). I think had I not found that cd so soon before the RSD list announcement, I'd have been even more excited by the vinyl than I was.
I'd played Sad & Dangerous just once before the list came out and, whilst I enjoyed it, it didn't jump to the top half of my favourite Dirty Three albums. I have a huge amount of time for Ocean Songs, Whatever You Love You Are and the self-titled album, but struggle with some others. Sad & Dangerous is a long album and there are some great songs on there (Jim's Dog, Warren's Waltz) but I find it doesn't grab me as strongly as the other albums do; it's hard to explain exactly why. I hope that over the years it'll grow on me - I certainly think it has the potential to do so.
The RSD release is pretty lovely - for a start they've added in three extra songs that aren't on the cd release (or at least not on my cd release - the sticker says four extra songs, but there's either three or five, depending on which cd release you compare it to). These are wrapped around the final track Turk, presumably to fit everything on the sides of vinyl - Turk is a long song - or perhaps they are calling Turk one of the extra songs. Who knows. The bonus tracks are a nice addition - In Bed With the Dirty Three is a very different song to usual and has a very varied structure and style. Bull is a nice song and Dirty Three Theme has some very unexpected vocals and a nice strained guitar sound. The two records themselves are on a nice green vinyl and the package is pretty nice all round.
Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 13
Cost: £25 new
Bought: Truck Store Oxford
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Green
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
