The Dirty Three have been accused on more than one occasion of being a one-trick pony. Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White were practically made for each other, as violin, guitar and drums mix and swirl into floor-thumping barroom rollickers or slow and quiet numbers brimming with pent-up emotion. Their sound is so distinctive that it’s easy to dismiss each album as simply a retread of the last; that’s how little there is out there that resembles the Dirty Three. With She Has No Strings Apollo, that criticism gained validity. After the focused minor masterpiece of Whatever You Love, You Are, the trio’s last album came off as a scattershot rehash of some of the finer moments from their back catalog, mixed with new experimental touches that failed to add anything of substance, unlike the violin overdubs of “I Offered It Up To The Stars And The Night Sky.” Without something different to distract from the main formula, Apollo was left to battle the inevitable comparisons to the Dirty Three’s greatest work, 1996’s Horse Stories.

Evidence that Cinder will not make the same mistakes has appeared in the form of “Great Waves,” which snags Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, for a rare Dirty Three vocal performance. Her presence alone flies in the face of the norm; the Dirty Three have built their reputation on evoking an almost lyrical structure without singers. But more than just lending her vocals to the track, Marshall practically replaces Warren Ellis’s violin entirely. You have to listen very closely to hear any evidence of a violin, and Turner’s guitar—often filling in the blanks Ellis leaves—is the main instrumental accompaniment here. Marshall’s vocal stylings occasionally mimic the crests and swoons of Ellis’s violin, completing the illusion. For the Dirty Three to drop what is arguably their signature sound, if only for one track, is an interesting move, and even if the core sound still remains, Cinder could signal a sea change. We’ll find out in October.