Dirty Three’s first new album in seven years (and first release on Drag City), Toward the Low Sun, is out next Tuesday, February 28th. For the next week, leading up to this release, NPR Music’s First Listen series will be streaming the album in its entirety. Listen with the link below.Returning to the basic formula for the Dirty Three on Toward the Low Sun, the labor and decision-making is divined evenly and democratically between Mick Turner, Jim White, and Warren Ellis. The sounds of traditional music are glimpsed in Warren’s violin as he saws away at something that kind of tightens our chest and give us that ol’ thousand-yard stare. Mick wanders hollow-bodied from abstract and dreamy to punishing hard chord rock in the space of a breath, never sacrificing a sense of the awesome along the path. And Jim . . . There’s drummers and time, and then there’s Jim White. He’s doing something that no one else does back there. Each takes the lead as the untidy trio trip lightly and jazzily from etude to still life to exploding the air into flames around us with just a violin, electric guitar and trap kit. NPR MUSIC FIRST LISTEN OF THE DIRTY THREE’S TOWARD THE LOW SUN