Dirty Three, “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night”
Album: Whatever You Love, You Are (Touch and Go, 2000)
Sometimes a three-minute instrumental piece starts to feel long before it hits the two-minute mark; other times, a seven-minute work feels too short as it comes to an end. At 6:52, Dirty Three’s “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” falls firmly in the latter category. With its wavering violins, alternatingly dirty and clean-but-warm guitar, and languidly paced but insistent drumming, “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” evokes a range and depth of feeling that defies its origins in a mere trio of musicians.
The title is “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night,” but the regrets expressed in the music feel much larger than missing a night out. Maybe that night at home was spent obsessing over a relationship — or maybe it was spent poring over a whole life filled with regrets. Regardless, the emotional complexity goes far beyond the pain of regret; after all, there’s also power in moving forward in spite of regrets, and there’s closure and beauty in coming to a point of understanding (even if not always accompanied by acceptance).
When “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” came up recently on a random playlist, it pulled me back to a time when I was more thoroughly steeped in indie rock and the early variants of its cousin, postrock. Using the traditional rock instrumentation of drums and guitar — plus the mildly nontraditional violin — “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” is devastatingly compelling instrumental music, much in the same way that Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, the genre-defining postrock album, was devastatingly compelling instrumental music when it came out nine years earlier.
Dirty Three’s voice — led but not entirely defined by Warren Ellis’ violin — is a voice of both fragility and power, resignation and longing, regret and hope. From Warren Ellis’ heartwrenching and achingly fragile violin lines to the brilliant, hypnotizing accompaniment of drummer Jim White and guitarist Mick Turner, “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” is a reminder of the emotions that instrumental music can convey — and that the genre of “instrumental music” is a wide river with lots of tributaries.
The Spot on the Hill blog is about discovery and exploration — discovering new music and exploring the origins and key elements of music I already love. In Now Listening, I explore music that has captured my imagination, both past and present.