Dirty Three: Horse Stories

It's hard to imagine anyone releasing another album this year that captures the musical and emotional breadth of Dirty Three's stunning new Horse Stories. With only a violin, a guitar and drums, the Australian band creates some of the most evocative, unpredictable, searing and beautiful music being made today. Last year, Dirty Three released its critical breakthrough, an eponymously titled album that won the band richly deserved accolades for its from-the-gut mixture of hypnotic intensity and wracked beauty. The nine-song, hour-long Horse Stories is even better: Whether the band is exploding into cacophony ("I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me"), breathlessly swooning ("Hope," "Warren's Lament," "I Knew It Would Come To This"), or doing both within a single mesmerizing song ("Sue's Last Ride"), it all fits together damn near perfectly. It's the kind of record that makes you want to stay up until 4 a.m., just so you can listen to it at 4 a.m. It's one of the rare albums that draws in anyone who happens to be walking by while it's playing. And it chokes you up without relying on short cuts like lyrics.