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Dirty Three: Tiny Desk Concert

Every member of Dirty Three has a highly respectable career outside of the band: Violinist Warren Ellis works closely with Nick Cave, drummer Jim White is a sought-after collaborator with an instantly recognizable sound, and guitarist Mick Turner has released a string of gorgeous instrumental solo albums when he's not working as a visual artist. But when the three musicians share a stage as Dirty Three — as they've done on and off for 20 years now — the result can be both beautiful and bonkers, as the opening moments of this Tiny Desk Concert amply demonstrate.

One of the loudest performances ever captured in the NPR Music offices — and it's got some competition from any number of brass bands — Dirty Three's set alternately seethes and rages in a flurry of high kicks, shambolic rumbling, prolific hairiness and dramatic yelling. Standing atop Bob Boilen's desk, Ellis cuts a stooped, lanky figure, but there's real physicality to his performance here, as he leads Dirty Three through three stormy songs: "Rain Song" and "The Pier" (from this year's Toward the Low Sun) and "Last Horse on the Sand" (from 1998's Ocean Songs).

Set List

  • "Rain Song"
  • "The Pier"
  • "Last Horse On The Sand"
  • Credits

    Producer: Stephen Thompson; Editor: Denise DeBelius; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Christopher Parks, Ryan Smith; photo by Lauren Rock/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)