Mick Turner/Tren Brothers Blue Trees by: Al Cottrill Mon:22-Oct-07 Label: Drag City Year: 2007 WB rating 70 out of 100

Dirty Three have produced fantastic music for many years, and their prodigal members seem to have an ability to turn anything they touch into acclaim. Each with their separate solo careers extending like tendrils through the indie music scene, these elder statesmen exert an influence even greater than their component parts would suggest – Nick Cave, Nina Nastasia, Will Oldham and Cat Power are but a few to have made use of these underground guns for hire.

Yet every now and then, they find time to do something by themselves; to reveal what they would do if given free reign, to show the parts left over after their yield has been gleaned for commerce and co-opt friendly sounds. While Warren Ellis has only 2002’s Three Pieces for Violin, and Jim White is restricted by the range of his instrument, Mick Turner has enough to warrant the release of a compilation, a collection of B-sides, out of print compilations and other rarities in the form of Blue Trees.

The first six tracks are from his Tren Brothers guise, composed by Turner and White, while the last eight are solo works. Reviewing a compilation of an artist’s work is akin to reviewing their career, and it is hard to tell what basis should be used to judge an entire oeuvre. In the case of Blue Trees, it is closer to a summarised compendium of Turner’s later career, ranging from his Dirty Three-minus-one Tren Brothers partnership, to his varied and experimental solo musings. Either way it is an incisive tool with which to break into this sound, like looking under the hood of Dirty Three’s bonnet to its braced and supple heart. But a compilation such as this is more a forum, a communication medium, means by which to put Turner’s music into the hands of listeners. To avail them of this personal performance, and these lost compositions.

Opener ‘Swing (Part 1 & 2)’ is in the Dirty Three style, but if Ellis was not so brazenly violent towards his instrument, if he coaxed peaks with his bow rather than tearing screams from its heart. Jessica Billey guests in his place, bringing a woman’s touch to Dirty Three’s ramshackle sound. With this, it is a beautiful track, a downcast Dirty Three – the comparisons to which were always going to be made – and an unsurprising introduction. ‘Au Revoir Mon Petit Chou’ seemingly dives straight into the middle of a track, and only follows on for 90 seconds. While the piano holds centre stage, it is the multitude of drum beats that give life to the song, White casting skittering beats wide and varied as the piano tempts and traces half drawn melodies. The other Tren tracks follow a more docile path, with either skipping drums and evanescent melody, or outback stomp, as heard on  ‘Help Mr. Rabbit, I Can’t Get Out’.

From here Turner’s work becomes more abstruse, wandering off Tren Brothers familiar track and into looping, textured solo pieces. Venturing beyond the realms of codified ‘solo’ performance, he is sometimes partnered, and if not, augments his playing with recorded loops, his guitar becoming three as he layers his own rhythms and samples. ‘Carny’ is a twisted fairground acid trip, all spinning lights and sideshow haunts corrupted into a shaking wall of noise, it’s successor, ‘Sunny Xmas Day’ a polar opposite, the restraint touching, its lilting melody intangible. Album flow, unifying themes, instrumental coherence and other superficial bonds are not important. Like one of Turner’s own exhibitions, this is a display, and is judged purely on the quality of single pieces of music; in this case, a decade’s worth.

As has been said before, Dirty Three combine into a sum greater than their parts. There is something in the relationship and familiarity between these three men that gives their output a hint of magic, the way the music bounces between them as they play off each other. Given this, Turner’s solo work was never going to reach the heights of this band. That said, it was never meant to. In his interview with Wireless Bollinger, Turner said he makes his solo music for himself, because he enjoys it, with no worry to ever releasing it. Where Dirty Three make music for the masses, with emotional appeal and theatrical highs and lows, Turner sculpts contemplative mosaics, the brushed drums and thrummed guitar often no more than a rippling pool of sound, yet somehow (here his experience clear), they are given life beyond their simple means. It is a joy that these works are now bound together in a single place, even if they hardly look like family.