“This is very different to any of our other records,” Warren Ellis tells Apple Music about Dirty Three’s first album in 12 years. “It feels like it’s all moving towards something, which is just this big, beautiful big D-major chord. For me, it’s the most positive, uplifting record we’ve ever done.” Starting with 1993’s self-titled cassette-only release of demos and stretching to their seventh album Cinder, the vast majority of Dirty Three’s discography was released in just 12 years. It then took seven years for 2012’s Toward the Low Sun to arrive and a further 12 for Love Changes Everything. But the extended gaps are hardly due to a lack of energy. Simply put, the Australian instrumental trio got really, really busy. “We realised it was in…everybody’s interest to do other things,” Ellis says. “All it meant to have not made a Dirty Three record for 12 years is that it was very different than if we’d made it a year later.” Guitarist Mick Turner (who’s also a painter) and drummer Jim White, who now lives in New York, frequently record and perform with other groups and artists, while violinist Ellis lives in Paris (“I’ve lived there for longer than I lived in Australia”) and is perhaps best known for being Nick Cave’s key collaborative partner across the Bad Seeds, solo work and more than a dozen film scores. He’s scored numerous additional soundtracks on his own, written a book (Nina Simone’s Gum) and owns an animal rescue park in Sumatra, which he’s also made a film about. “It would’ve been impossible,” he says, of finding time any sooner. But when you spend half your life (and your entire musical career) in a band, it doesn’t matter how much else you do or how long you’re away—it’ll always feel like coming home when you get there. “We realised that doing other stuff added to the longevity of the band. I’ve been working a lot in England, making scores and soundtracks, the Bad Seeds, working with Nick. I’m really grateful that I’ve had a varied creative life, but it’s all positive for Dirty Three. We love getting back together and, as soon as we hit into the first note, it’s just, ‘Ah, there we are.’ When we got back into the rehearsal room, as soon as I heard the sound, I was like, ‘That’s us.’ It brings back 30 years.” The trio’s music is known for its hypnotic, enveloping builds that seem to teeter at the edge of total chaos—in the most beautiful sense of the word. It’s evolved over time to a place where they can work together off even the smallest ideas. “It is improvised, but it isn’t,” Ellis says. “Love Changes Everything is a record we couldn’t have made early on. The first few albums were us just getting a few songs, playing live and recording the set. By the time we got to Ocean Songs [recorded in 1997 and released in March 1998], we had to sit down and make up some ideas in a rehearsal room over six days, but we never had much time in the studio. So they’d either be first or second of very few takes. “For this one, we didn’t have any fixed ideas or structures, but it’s not really improvisation in the sense of it being a free-form thing. Ultimately, it finds some foundation, because that’s the sort of world we move in. We like to have a structure, even if it’s very light on the ground. Then, within that, we go off in dynamics and playing off each other. Some of it’s first takes, some is chopped out of a 20-minute session where suddenly it gets into something.” It’s an album best enjoyed from start to end, intended to be one continuous piece. The first track, “Love Changes Everything I” (each track follows the same numerical convention, from I to VI), opens on a lengthy, distorted chord. Guitar and drums start flickering up over the top, followed by a simple violin motif, as if each player is dusting off cobwebs, warming up after a long time away. It doesn’t take long to get there: everything syncs up into the rhythm, anchored by the rising violin, and suddenly it’s all together, running toward something. From there, each track rises and falls through motifs that fade, explode and fade down again, all leading toward the final piece’s enormous, joyful climax. There’s a continuous feel to it all, which was partly inspired by the structure of John Coltrane’s Ascension, which is similarly considered a single piece split over several tracks, titled with numbers. “As [our album] was happening, it felt like it needed to have one overarching idea, rather than split it up and try and think of names for it,” Ellis says, discussing its connection to the landmark 1966 jazz record. “It wasn’t played as one thing, the idea to make it into one piece came after. It felt like that’s what it was asking for, more than any other record of ours.” Coltrane was a life-changing influence for Ellis, so it’s no surprise the late great has continued to inspire him. “Music helped me find my place in the world,” he says. “I used to sit in church as a kid, and I wanted God to appear, but it was always disappointing. The first time I heard Coltrane, I thought I was hearing the voice of God. I can remember the day it changed my life. It was never going to be the same after that.” The decision to omit song titles goes further, though, allowing the group to keep it open for interpretation. “Breaking things down can be such a disservice, because the truth is way more sobering,” says Ellis. “Look at the Easter bunny. What a fantastic thing, this big rabbit that jumps around and brings eggs and things like that. Then you find out it’s actually just your parents. I mean, what’s more interesting?” For Ellis, the interaction between music and listener is what makes it art. “It’s one thing to make it,” he says, “but it takes flight when it’s finished. It changes because it’s no longer yours. It doesn’t really matter what your intentions were. People can say much more interesting things about it than I could, because they’ve made it their own.” It’s a shift that demarcates LCE from earlier Dirty Three albums, filled with song titles and stories well known to listeners, particularly those who’ve seen the band in concert and been regaled by Ellis’ lively tales. But those works were “internal”, Ellis says—coming from three inner places and experiences, made for inner listening. “Even if it was very explosive, it seemed to be coming from an internal place,” he says. “This album feels much more inclusive, more of an outward expression.” There’s still the matter of the album title, of course, but Ellis wants to be clear: “Love changes everything” is no aphorism. It reflects the album’s “outward expression”, in turn revealing its overall theme. “I used to think love was such a personal thing, just me and another person,” he says. “But you can extend that to the community, in the things that you do, and that can feel good for other people. You don’t have to understand the mechanics of music for it to transport you. It can open your mind without saying a word. It’s like when you’re in love and you just can’t control it—you don’t know why you think that way, but the sky is suddenly bluer, everything tastes better, everything is fun. When you get knocked out by love, the world feels like a different place.”