Ocean Songs

Dirty Three | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 31, 1998)
• Original Release Date: March 31, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Touch & Go Records
• ASIN: B0000060LT
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,873 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: DIRTY THREE
Title: OCEAN SONGS
Street Release Date: 03/31/1998
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rock rolls to the sea, July 28, 2000

By 

Leo (Oegstgeest, Holland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ocean Songs (Audio CD)

The Ufkoko-EP, released between Horse Stories and Ocean Songs, was devided in to two pieces. The first song, To Aster!, sounded rough and uptempo, while the rest of Ufkoko sounds far more modest and the songs seem to contain more color. In Dirty Three-terms, To Aster! is a live-song; from the beginning on, the band had left their quiet, emotional songs at home, whilst playing on tour, to bring only the rougher, mostly climaxed songs with them. Even on Horse Stories, there are some 'live'-songs, even some songs that had accompanied the Dirty Three on tour for years and were begging for a place on the CD. Despite of the high quality of those songs, they don't seem to stimulate the album to become a coherent whole, and that's an important criterion for the quality of this kind of music. On Ocean Song, these properties are better worked out. Being introduced by the loose, improvisative play of the guitar (Mick Turner) and the violin (Warren Ellis), the songs seem to be rolling off a hill, accompanied by the almost melodic sounds of the drum, played by Jim White. To where? To the ocean, because that's where all things are going to happen this time. In contrast with the previous recordings, not only the songtitles or the beautiful paintings by Mick Turner follow the theme - every single song seems to be drowned in the blue of the sea. A dark shade of blue of course; the Dirty Three are not here to tell us about the joy of the world, they're here to tell help us when we are having a sad time. And we are, twenty-four hours a day.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Evocative, unusual, but maybe something's not quite right?, April 27, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ocean Songs (Audio CD)

The Ocean Songs CD arrived through the post accompanied by an (undated) clipping from the Telegraph Magazine with a review of The Dirty Three's work by Jessamy Calkin. Thanks Sis! The first track booms out, a striking confection evocative of folk melodies and the smell mof the sea, indeed a real pleasure. Track 2 is not dissimilar. In track 3 the concordant theme is fun, but the rest? By track 4 the CD seemed to have lost direction and frank tedium set in midway through track 5. In the Calkin review one reads that 'before the Dirty Three, Warrin Ellis [the violinist with the group] had only ever played in orchestras', while two paragraphs later Ellis learned Irish and Scottish folk tunes in Edinburgh and 'started playing in the streets and set up home in a whisky distillery' before returning, by way of Budapest, to Australia, where he met up with Jim White [percussion] and Mick Turner [guitar]. Not quite right? Back to the music. These three have got talent, that much is clear. There are problems with the recording levels of some tracks, the guitar is a little too sharp, and one wonders how much is improvised. Maybe The Dirty Three should go back and do it all again properly, exploiting their talent to the full, using original material and getting the recording just right. The blend of modern interpretation, folk tune and uncontrived dissonance generates an atmosphere that is new and unusual, if not frankly postmodern. Despite this, somehow the CD does not quite gel. But if you are ever stranded in a pub in Cape Town or Valparaiso, with no-one to wait for and nowhere to go, and need a little oblivion, this is the music.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars this is more like it, March 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ocean Songs (Audio CD)

I was not a big fan of Horse Stories, the album which preceeds Ocean Songs, but this one won me over. It seems more focused to me; the mood is consistent throughout. Slow and somber, never really finding a downbeat most of the time. But the boys have a strange telepathy going on, and it shines through on most tracks. Warren Ellis' intonation has improved since Horse Stories; he prefers a lower range here, which makes up for the lack of a bassist. And once again, Steve Albini seems to be the perfect engineer, placing the group in a isolated, yet ambient space. The dynamics are more apparent, and it helps. This album is great for a long night-drive, relaxing, thinking, and many other moods. Kind of like what Erik Satie called "furniture music;" it's there for you to listen to or have in the background. As far as the whole Dirty Three catalog goes, this is the essential package.