I played this song in the presence of company once. Not on purpose, of course, but more because I needed to hear this particular song at that particular time, as some form of emotional prescriptive. My friend both figured out “Lullabye For Christie” and missed the point entirely at the same time: “What the hell are we listening to, Wesley? It’s like a fuckin’ funeral dirge.” Maybe it’s the violin.

Whatever You Love, You Are is arguably the Dirty Three’s finest moment. Horse Stories is probably more beloved, and definitely the raw quality of the Dirty Three’s earlier albums is noticably absent here. But the Australian trio are at their creative peak on this 2000 record, every song precious and integral to the whole. Whatever You Love, You Are is the Dirty Three’s most vivid portrait; while Horse Stories sounded vaguely nostalgic and Ocean Songs carried the weight of a thousand severe depressions, Whatever You Love sounds like a love letter to the wonders of the night.

By the time She Has No Strings Apollo came around in 2003, people started to wonder if the Three had anything else up their sleeves; finally the melancholy material and the violin-guitar-drums arrangements were wearing thin. “I Offered It Up To The Stars And The Night Sky” still seemed to offer something new, with its opening of scattered violin overdubs. Even the more traditional tracks like “I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night” radiated with emotion. And then there’s “Lullabye For Christie,” still one of my all-time favourites after all these years. It’s such a simple song, but nevertheless a powerfully uplifting one. It is possibly the closest thing to true beauty I have in my collection.

This is the last song I’ll be posting this year as part of the regular rotation. I’ll be spending all of December reviewing the albums I bought in 2004, the good and the bad. Luckily for you, I managed to find at least one good song to post off every album, so even if some of the albums were mostly stinkers, you still win in the end. The year-in-review MP3s will stay up two weeks longer in usual, meaning they won’t start to disappear until the new year. That’s also when angels twenty will return to the regular rotation.