The Australian legends have not been to Sweden in 27 years, and it shows from the enormous turnout at Debaser. The place is packed to the brim, and the festive atmosphere soars when Warren Ellis and his bandmates step onto the stage to let their instrumental improvisational rock wash over us.
Warren Ellis is best known for playing in Bad Seeds, and Nick Cave himself has said that no one matches Ellis’s genius, intuition, and musicianship. The man also seems to have an ocean of inspiration, so it’s only natural that he continues to create and play music while Bad Seeds are on hiatus and Cave is laboring over a new album.
Moreover, the bearded multi-instrumentalist is an experience in himself, especially when he plays. He hammers away at the piano, and at one point, he thumps his left foot into the poor keyboard. In other songs, he caresses the keys as if they were newly hatched chicks.
But it is the violin that is his greatest asset. The bow hair flies, and the strings are rubbed until it becomes like a thin spiderweb around the violin body. Ellis, in large sunglasses and a sparkly Elvis shirt, dances and flails around as if possessed by a demon, howling like a werewolf and downing wine straight from the bottle. But he never misses a single note.
The fact is that the band is incredibly tight, both in older songs like See Above, Sky Below and Indian Love Song, or in tracks from their latest album Love Changes Everything. It is truly mesmerizing to witness the trio rebuilding their material in real-time.
Additionally, Warren Ellis is very entertaining in his between-song banter. He might ask everyone in the venue to say a prayer for their deceased pets (Ellis himself recently had to take one of his four cats to the animal hospital). Then he continues on the same theme, wanting us to summon the souls of Joey Ramone, Nina Simone, Elvis, and Bowie. After all, it is Halloween.
We also hear that he neither remembers when nor if Dirty Three have ever been in Stockholm, "but you can Google it." When someone shouts 1999, he says, "Ahh, 1999. Well, at that time I was high on alcohol and heroin every day so that’s probably why."
Halfway through the concert, he looks out at the audience and sees quite a few older fans, telling us we should start bands, as there are far too few senior bands. This gets a decidedly positive reaction from us old-timers.
However, two hours of pure instrumental music in a sauna-hot venue does get a bit strenuous; it becomes hard to keep up towards the end. The songs are not easily accessible either; there are no outright hits or choruses here—most of it is built on the band jamming freely.
That said, it is a staggering experience to see geniuses at work, something you see increasingly rarely in the rock world these days. Let’s hope the band returns before another quarter-century passes.
