Weekly Release Spotlight: Dirty Projectors
Posted on 8/29/2007
Dirty Projectors
Rise Above
[Dead Oceans]
I initially refused to write this spotlight on this 6th album from Brooklyn native Dave Longstreth, aka Dirty Projectors. In the past, I had attempted to listen to 2004's Slaves' Graves & Ballads and consequently, 2005's The Getty Address. It didn't go over well. Shrill cannibalistic vocals snarling over a lack of tempo and untuned acoustic instruments wasn't really my bag. It was everything I liked about Animal Collective, but put into a rusty blender with an accidental serving of Jolt cola, thus destroying it beyond recognition.
Needless to say, Rise Above is officially the first time I've been able to make it through an entire Dirty Projectors record. Honestly, it feels like it should be some kind of accomplishment. The truth of the mater is, however, 1) you don't really accomplish much by listening to a record in its entirety in the first place, and 2) it can't really be considered an accomplishment when there wasn't much challenge in listening to the brilliant turn Longstreth has made with his newest effort.
Now, he's not getting rid of that aforementioned rusty Animal Collective blender. No, instead, it's a brand new blender and it's being operated (read: produced) by Grizzly Bear member Chris Taylor. And the unnecessary swigs of Jolt cola? It sounds like he's now sipping on some herbal tea. Obviously, Chris Taylor is very familiar in making the tribal-meets-spunky sound similar to Animal Collective (his band's album Horn of Plenty was AC-lite before their 2006 unique magnum opus Yellow House). His knowledge from that era served him and Dirty Projectors well--in fact, it's better than Taylor simply recycling the best sounds from his own records, which I would have been happy with. Instead, he made Rise Above still sound like a cock-eyed Dirty Projectors record, but organized the noise so it could be enjoyable forward-thinking pop music, a la Yellow House or Feels.
Naturalistic guitars and percussion are spastic (looped backwards, appear out of thin air just to disappear seconds later) on "No More" and relaxing (hazy, droning, quiet) on "Thirsty and Miserable." Tempos exist this time--they're just hyper to change from fast to slow and fast again within the blink of eye. It is a truly caustic yet always intriguing listening experience with equal amounts pop and fervor, calm and peacefulness. Heavenly female vocals (eerily reminiscent of Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Frazer) descend behind in "Gimme Gimme Gimme" and leap in front of Longstreth's Antony-meets-drunk-guy croon in the album opened "What I See."
Oh and besides the sound of the record, which is usually the most interesting thing about the majority of worthwhile records, there's one other interesting factoid about the album: it is the product of Longstreth's attempt to cover the entire canonical hardcore album Damaged by Black Flag without having listened to it since he was a teenager. Some tracks are missing (I would omit "Our Singer" if I was covering Slanted & Enchanted from memory), there's lots of lyrical confusion/ambiguity, and of course it doesn't even attempt to sound anything like anything even close to Henry Rollins. I mean, there are cover albums (usually a big fat snoozefest), and then there are cover albums distilling the essence of understanding that our favorite albums when we were young will never be as good as how good we remember them being.
Stream: Dirty Projectors - No More