Dirty Projectors

Scott Wallace
22nd Feb 2017

Dirty Projectors, the self-titled album that is the seventh in the band's discography, is the first to be released since the group shed golden-voiced singers Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian from its lineup. The duo's spry and elastic voices had been an integral part of the band's sound for more than half a decade, and this latest piece of glitchy, R&B and hip-hop influenced strangeness from lead Dirty Projector Dave Longstreth finds him grappling with their absence in inventive and often beautiful ways.

There's always been something a little bit haywire about Dirty Projectors' music. Even on the band's lush, breakthrough 2009 album Bitte Orca, and the leaner 2012 followup Swing Lo Magellan, they played like a band malfunctioning, rhythmic and melodic hiccups disrupting the surface of what could have otherwise passed for plain old indie rock. There's no danger of that here; filled with contrasting electronic and acoustic textures, the music on Dirty Projectors constantly sounds like it's on the verge of collapse. 

Longstreth's unruly voice, which has been an object of derision for Dirty Projectors' dissenters, is pitch-shifted in both directions on the disarming and dreamy opener "Keep Your Name." The two instances of Longstreth's voice, the high-pitched voice sample from the band's 2012 track "Impregnable Question" and twisted into a shriek, rub up against one another, never quite connecting with the bed of swelling piano on which the track is built until his actual voice breaks into a slightly unhinged rap. The following "Death Spiral" combines pneumatic synth textures with a molasses-slow hip-hop beat, Flamenco-influenced guitar and piano, cinematic strings, and another endearing rap-like cadence.

For the most part, the songs never play as being quirky for the sake of quirky. There's a catharsis to the chaos. The first three tracks peak with the gentle but anguished story-song "Up in Hudson," where an effortless (but painstakingly orchestrated) chorus of Longstreth's voice hovers behind a gentle beat guided by murmuring horns and what sounds like tuned wooden percussion. The track builds to a satisfying and very moving climax of percussive beauty and roaring guitar. The same is true of the single "Little Bubble," which gradually shapeshifts across its five-minute length, combining baroque strings and earth and soulful electric piano to stunning effect. 

But when the strings appear on the jittery "Work Together," though, the result is a sigh of frustration. Longstreth's tendency toward rambling is apparently completely without restraint here, and tracks like this one, as well as the irritating, directionless, autotuned warble of the seven-minute "Ascent Through Clouds," play more like a jumble of disconnected pieces than proper songs with interconnected parts. A majority of the record finds Longstreth deeply affected by the loss of Coffman, who was not only his musical partner, but also his romantic partner, but sometimes catharsis spills over into confusion. 

Thankfully, "Cool Your Heart," a duet with forward-thinking R&B singer D∆WN (aka Dawn Richard) fixes those wrongs with a reggae beat as gentle as a kiss, an eddying melody, gorgeous harmonies, and a sunburst of horns at the climax. The track appropriately dwarfs everything that comes before it, healing the wounded sorrow that permeated the rest of the record. At the same time as it makes sense that the rest of the record wasn't this focused or clear-eyed, it's still frustrating that this track dramatically outpaces its cousins. 

On the closing track, Longstreth draws from a very unexpected source. The immortal organ from Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is paraphrased in the drifting, Gospel-influenced "I See You." It also shares with that track a sense of otherworldly contentment. Longstreth sings "And we could just be in kindness and peace now seeing that love is the art / Yeah, I believe that the love that we made is the art." This moment of realisation recalls his words on the album's first track, "Fear is a manacle, but love in unchained." Even in the face of disembowling, life-ruining heartache, love lingers. 

Dirty Projectors is out now on digital formats, with a physical release on CD and vinyl to follow on Friday February 24th.