Lordy, is Warren Ellis determined to live up to his reputation as the bearded berserker of stygian Australian chamber rock or what?
Loquacious, scabrous, Satantically bleary-eyed, the Dirty Three leader begins with a free-form rant about Jim Morrison, his rubbish soundman, Phil Lynott... and well, actually we’re not sure what he’s on about and, by the end, neither, you suspect, is he. There’s always a fine line with this freewheeling musician patter – punters appreciate a bit of interaction but not to the extent that it’s impinging on the music. With Ellis, whose day job is cranking up the fucked-up factor with the Bad Seeds, the music and the jabbering have a lot in common, though: opener ‘Rain Song’ is as ragged, unpredictable and gleefully deranged as the verbiage he’s just been spewing.
As his two bandmates stomp out a stewy, moist rhythm, Ellis, shirt now unbuttoned to his lower chest, mugs gleefully, jumping atop an amp, dancing with arms akimbo (he puts the violin away for this part) and, oh dear, doing a strange raggle-taggle karate kick, his back to the crowd (to spare his embarrassment or ours? It isn’t clear). The actual music is, as you might expect, a Bad Seeds wig-out minus Cave’s patented gothic misogyny. It is howling, and gleeful, and whips you in the face like hailstones in a lightning storm.
Thereafter the evening seesaws between crazed chit-chat (he really ought not to have ‘attempted’ an Oirish accent when relaying an anecdote about visiting O’Donoghue’s as a young man) and manic playing, during which he lurches from piano to fiddle and back again. It’s cathartic and gloriously overcooked. Just what you wanted, in other words, from a side-project by that mad looking chap from the Bad Seeds.