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The Tivoli - Thu Jun 24
“You wouldn't understand this music, you never did smack,” the lady behind me says to her friend as Mick Turner of Dirty Three shuffles onto the stage to perform a set of droning, guitar-led dirges, and what feels like three or four hours in, I can only assume that she’s correct. Turner, though, is renowned as a visual artist as well as a musician, and the paintings projected onto the screen behind the band, of surrealist kangaroos and beautiful, sad-eyed women, are striking. I’d say they remind me of Mirka Mora or Robert Dickerson, but anyone with a more than superficial appreciation of Australian art would probably get very mad at me for saying that, so maybe we’ll move on.
Headliner Hope Sandoval took 10 years between her last two albums, so clearly, she’s not a woman in a great hurry. A leisurely half hour after Turner departs, the lights go down again, but Sandoval has a good three songs’ worth of entrance music queued up before making her first timid appearance. Tonight, she is backed by Irish rockers Dirt Blue Gene – who earlier played a set of slow, psychedelic alt-country – and Colm Ó Cíosóig of My Bloody Valentine, and together, they swoon and sway their way through a series of fuzzed-out ballads. Sandoval is lithe and willowy as ever in a black dress, and her sweet, husky voice is unchanged since her Mazzy Star days; she giggles as sound guys scurry across the stage, and, true to her shy reputation, doesn’t say a single thing to the audience between songs. Suzanne, from her first solo album, is a highlight, as is watching her hammer away at a xylophone, but to be honest, a lot of the songs kind of just bleed together into pretty noise. I’m almost definitely sure that the lady behind me had a whale of a time.
ALASDAIR DUNCAN
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