We Saw This: Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors are a band you know you are supposed to like, but not so sure how or why or even what to say next after you agree with your friends that, yes, you like them too. Their tracks have probably at some point infiltrated whatever computers are shuffling your deck these days, or, at the very least, they served as a somewhat challenging musical backdrop to an uncomfortable ochre pickling pot-luck you went to two years ago in Bushwick/Oakland. But when you did encounter their music, and I know you did, it probably left you feeling something: either really impressed, or maybe really bored, but more likely than either of those it left you in some combination of confused, curious and willing. Always a good place to leave things, at least in my mind.

It was this exact kind of back-to-school anticipation that filled all the wandering black-framed faces in last night's audience. Normally when I cover a show I worry about getting stuck in the crowd and being unable to move for hours to get a drink or take a piss without losing my precious vantage point to snap photos from. Last night I felt like I could gently ask anyone if they might please bring me a beer - a dark ale actually - maybe even lend me ten bucks? and it would be a sure fire hey-man-no-problem. These people came to a rock show no doubt, but they were also not-so-secretly there to sharpen their pencils and moisten their brains with a lesson from one of today's greatest musical overachievers. This is, after all, a band that seven years ago made a politically tinged glitch opera about Don Henley and also more recently collaborated with Bjork on an EP about marine mammals and an obscure mountain (more of a tall hill really) named Wittenburg that happens to be my old trailhead for hiking out to a beach that you will never see or hear of. Weird.

So, what I'm saying is that there's no shortage of esoterica to dip into here, it's more like a bottomless fondue actually, and with a show that promised to deliver their first full new live set in almost four years, there was bound to be plenty of fresh finches and orcas to take home and cook up for your friends. The amazing thing is (and this really is The Thing) despite the combined student loan debt of last night's attendance weighing in at just over 730 trillion dollars, despite the Lincoln Center resumés or multi-culti cross-genre post-whatever hullabaloo or the well known toxicity that concepts like Art and Experimental can have in a good ole fashioned rocking: Dirty Projectors are, in fact, good.

A gig like this used to be a big deal, and I guess it still is. After a few warmups in Canada to "road test the new stuff" Dirty Projectors are kicking off a 18 week international tour starting right here on their home turf of North Brooklyn literally just two hours before the buy button turns green in the US and UK to download their new album. In the days before music was a computer virus living inside your phone this would have meant a trip to the mall, two slices at Sbarro, large Dr. Pepper, a long line at Tower Records and an MTV World Premiere Video counting down in ten, nine, eight… You see, plenty of reason to be excited. Not to mention that the new album Swing Lo Magellen has already garnered a massive amount of critical acclaim which unanimously declares it as a totally new sound and direction for the group. Gushing reviews from music critics and this album being totally different than all the others are sort of Dirty Projectors' M.O. though, that's how they roll, so nothing too out of the ordinary there. In any case, there was a lot to look forward to which explains why the whole show was being filmed and live streamed by a pretty serious looking production crew.

The first and only other time I ever saw Dirty Projectors perform was about four years ago at The Independent in San Francisco. I was on a date. I hadn't heard of them and before the show I intentionally didn't Google or listen to a single thing which turned out to be a really smooth move on my behalf. This definitely is a live band, it's the truth, and it's pretty remarkable how I've gotten this far without mentioning all the talent and coordination they put on show when you go see them actually play. David Longstreth's seemingly disconnected south paw fingerpicking goes through all sorts of unexpected changes in time and tone (is that a kalimba?) while he's belting out his wordy and ambitiously melodic vocal lines. His singing style basically covers his whole range in the delivery of just about every line of every song (this can get exhausting on the recordings I find, but you know what they say: you can't really overdo anything live).

Although the band's Yin and Yang are perfectly balanced (three boys, three girls), let's jump to talking about the girls now. Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle give more than ever of their signature long and unusually harmonized backup vocals that gliss, bend, outline, and upset the songs' underlying rock straightness. The girls also do all the fun complex clapping patterns you hear all over the new record which is not only cute but pretty damn photogenic as you can see in their video. Before this show, I didn't quite realize how much Amber supports Longstreth on the guitar in the rakey African melodic style that's all over their work. Amber is a force all her own, with some of the most memorable material from their breakthrough album on the hit song "Stillness is the Move" which was welcomed to huge cheers as the band's encore last night (her recent collaboration with Major Lazer is a must to check out by the way).

If you listen to the new record, or really any of their records, you might wonder how it would all come together live (something tells me they were wondering this too at some point), but allow me to report that they did ultimately figure that shit out. Unlike a lot of bands that use electronics or the production process/studio as a kind of instrument or songwriting tool, Dirty Projectors seem to be able to easily translate their recordings into a live version; it's sort of proof of the songwriting's good genes. This is a tight band that's more interested in dry tones and timing (note the perfect and beautiful amount of slop in the bass lines all over the new tunes) than they are with crazy effects and endless layering. Silence gets the golden treatment on the new album which is more stripped-down and open, probably even danceable were someone to ever attempt that.

The new material was met with a ton of enthusiasm and didn't fail to impress. The crowd doesn't move much at a Dirty Projectors show and I have no evidence to support that they move much at any other time, but it's somehow excusable since most people just seemed genuinely excited to sit back and take in everything that was going down onstage. Swing Lo Magellen is a lot more groove-based and songy than some of their older stuff, the kind of music that you want to listen to in the car just as much as a general admission main floor. It's still hyper-sectional and structurally freeform but tends to favor landing in sometimes almost too pleasant beat/groove territory before blasting back out into their clever high-energy themes. The relatively "chill" radio-readiness of a lot of Swing Lo led to the show feeling a little annoyingly tame at times, but it also made some of the old tracks they played from Bitte Orca like "Cannibal Resource" and "Useful Chamber" sound H-U-G-E when they threw them into the mix. Variety's good right? That's what you get when you try new things. Experimental? All I know is that they really need to do their next album strictly in the style of the new track "Maybe That Was It", the only song Longstreth prefaced with a disclaimer before completely retuning his guitar. What's going on there?

Bonus points for the night: Hand claps

Points subtracted for the night: Shout outs to Youtube.

Previously: We Saw This: Diamond Rugs

Photos by Kevin Shea Adams

@KevinSheaAdams