Grinderman have apparently called it quits, but all the better, to free up the hands of Warren Ellis: his other, epic band The Dirty Three are releasing their first album since 2005 next year.
“Toward the Low Sun” is dropping via Drag City on Feb. 21, and in March in the U.K. on Bella Union. The trio — consisting of Nick Cave/Grinderman mainstay Ellis, one of my top five favorite drummers of all time Jim White and Mick Turner — last released “Cinder” in 2005 on Touch & Go (may it rest in peace).
And speaking of proper RIPs, Bella Union head Simon Raymond used that exact expression as he wrote about Grinderman, in lieu of the new D3 set. Cave himself called the whole thing off.
“That’s it for Grinderman,” the front ‘Man said at the Meredith Music Festival in Australia last weekend. Later, he told FasterLouder: “I knew months in advance that it was going to be our last show as Grinderman. Was there any looking back? No because the very next day I was going into the studio and start production on a new band”s [Teenage Mothers‘] album.”
So, back to D3: Drag City is the home of Mick Turner’s solo albums, as it has dropped efforts from Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Smog, with whom White has played. It’s a natural match.
“What is fantastic about this return, is that it is not cosy, comfortable, nice-to-be-back, not at all! This is like their first ever recordings! NOTHING ELSE sounds like this. There is an energy and a raw excitement that is evident from the first electrifying opening moments through to the album’s finale, and for all their incredible music of the past, NEVER have the Dirty Three seemed more relevant,” Raymond gushed. Meanwhile, I almost just passed out.
“Dirty Three has always been about the way we play together and feed off each other. We wanted this one to be a return to the more improvised and instinctive approach of the earlier recordings,” violinist Ellis said in a release this week.
Here is the tracklist for “Toward the Low Sun”:
1. Furnace skies 4:44
2. Sometimes I forget you”ve gone 3:46
3. Moon on the land 4:51
4. Rising below 5:47
5. The pier 4:53
6. Rain song 3:50
7. That was was 4:01
8. Ashen snow 5:13
9. You greet her ghost 4:50