Dirty Projectors - The Scala, London - 2/4/09
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
I know what my record of the year is and I've not even heard it yet. It's not even out. 'Til sodding June. But I know nothing, nothing, is going to be better than Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors. It's immediately one of my favourite records ever.
Last night, they played most of it for a crowd of people who, like me, will not be particularly familiar with these songs. A crowd most likely expecting, if not the hits (they haven't had any), at least a set peppered with the odd rendition of something off'a preceding opus Rise Above, their startlingly brilliant and drastic "reimagining" of Black Flag's Damaged. What's interesting is that though the audience don't get what they think they want, they adore what they do eventually get. The new Dirty Projectors material aired tonight is so astounding that to hear it is to momentarily exist in a bubble where any other music ceases to play on one's mind. I want for nothing in this bubble, other than the continuation of this sound.
I'm now convinced that head 'Projector Dave Longstreth could match any definition of the term genius you dare to come up with, however convoluted. Compositionally, the man is clearly a mastermind when it comes to songwriting and arranging. He's also out there on his own, pushing boundaries without company, experimenting, yes, but with melody rather than dissonance like so many others. However, it's not just the fact that it's so well thought out that gets me excited - the joy in execution is so palpable it's impossible to not get carried away with it. He can sing and play guitar as well as any other non-omnipotent being. I don't usually even trust people who play guitar left-handed, but I think I worship this guy. He raises his eyebrows when he sings and looks like a lost little boy. And he does weird things with his really, really long neck.
He's also a conductor, a director, probably some kind of Draconian slave driver. I'd like to be Dave Longstreth, but I don't think I'd like to be anyone else in Dirty Projectors. Maybe the fact that the music I was involved in was utterly f**king incredible would sooth me, but knowing that it would always be Dave's music, not mine, might annoy the creative imp that lives inside me. Whatever happens in a Dirty Projectors song happens because Dave Longstreth wants it to. I'd be terrified the whole time of putting a foot wrong, making that tendon in his neck snap, which it will, one day, probably on stage. There are three girls in the band at the moment, and three of the finest singers I've e'er heard in my life they are too (especially when they're all at it simultaneously - Christ, yes), but it's likely they're there not because they've any creative input, but just because Longstreth's songs currently require immaculate three part female vocal harmonies. When they don't, he'll kick them out of the band. Or maybe he'll keep them around just because they're all really pretty. He'll do what the f**k he wants.
But at the moment though, at the moment, Dirty Projectors are the best band in the discovered universe. Better than Radiohead, Deerhoof or Animal Collective, the only three who can even mount a challenge. Everyone had the same look on their face tonight, one of, "it's so plainly obvious that I'm watching a band at the precise moment that they have ascended to the very peak of their powers that I genuinely could not name a thing I would rather be doing than gazing upon it". People turned to each other on numerous occasions after moments of particular magnificence and bent double with laughter at the idea of a band who had the audacity to be that good. That was all you could do. Laugh.
So the Bitte Orca stuff went down a treat, but they weren't being nasty - Rise Above cuts got an airing also, though there was nothing from the three albums that preceded that. 'Depression' melted gorgeously in to 'Thirsty and Miserable', on which it was hilarious to hear a crowd of people try to sing along with vocal parts as complicated as Fermat's last theorem (what? Exactly). 'Gimme Gimme Gimme' was given, given, given and the perpetual cries for 'Rise Above' were rewarded with a beauteous rendition on which uber-prefectionist Longstreth was so terrified of starting on anything other than precisely the correct note delivered in one meticulously planned out drawl that he couldn't bring himself to utter it until his seventh or eighth approach to the microphone. When he finally spat it out, you understood why it took so much composure - the result was breathtaking.
Look at me getting carried away. I often wonder that I might like some stuff so much and talk about it so hyperbolically that it actually becomes off putting, negating the point of even writing this little report. But hopefully, someone else will know how fun it is to say things like "I might as well not go to any other gigs this year, as I know what my best one was" and actually, from the bottom of my heart, mean it.
Artists in this article: Dirty Projectors
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