Dirty Projectors

When the 2nd track StArted I thought he was singing over Timberlake's Mirrors

It's tainted with misogynism, and it fails as a narrative, but it's a fine record

sure but is it better or worse than iceage

for the record I am fine with records that are grounded in specific details or about public people, that's hard to avoid if you ever want to broach the subject as an artist; it's the contempt that I'm not fine with

Yes, and the reason the difference is important is that while the whole album is filled with specific details about public people, it's only a few lines that have contempt.

And while that could be enough to dismiss the album, it does not turn Longstreth into Robin Thicke.

Yeah no that Uproxx review is garbage. Isolate the parts where the music is discussed and realize... she has nothing to say that isn't about her.

"Musically, the record is inventive, fascinating, and experimental in the best sense of the word. His ability to fuse R&B, folk, pop and deeply intelligent songwriting with alien electronic sounds is on stunning display here." Like... where are the red pens? Show don't tell??

Also starting off a review with a five-year-old self-retweet of praise is... not the best look

If coming off like as much of a narcissistic egotist as Longstreth is some sort of reviewer performance art, I guess I apologize, but that didn't make it easier to read.

anyway, sorry for getting heated, i just bristle at the abuse of length-trumps-insight "longform" in both personal essays and music crit

"what I want from art is truth / what you want is fame"
hahaha these are actual lyrics w t f

the thing i mainly remember about that uproxx review is the word "regretted"

also "an sh*thead"

iirc most of the lyrics on bitte were just imgaistic non sequitir. do irc? if so, idk why he switched tack
― flopson, Thursday, February 23, 2017 2:23 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Might be true on the whole, but the only lyrics I remember from Bitte Orca sound like they were lifted from chill gchat convos and are aggressively non-expressionistic / symbolic:

Definitely you can come and live with us
I know there's a space for you in the basement, yeah
All you gotta do is help out with the chores and dishes
And I know you will

/

Maybe I will get a job
Get a job as a waitress
Maybe waiting tables in a diner
In some remote city down the highway

maura otm

xp hm true I was thinking of stuff like this

The renegade feeling satisfied
You blinked and closed your eyes
You like the feeling of Saturday
You love the danger in the night
The restless corpse is collapsed wind
The breath is daffodil
What not become what is lapsing
Into the universal fill
Or maybe just

BO is a great album

that song rules so hard

the elephant in the room here is that the music of the Dirty Projectors is 1000% garbage

on stunning display

Re the Uproxx review, I thought it was a coup to respond to "an album of undisguised criticism of a public figure" with a critique that was essentially a self-indictment

Like, responding to a grossly non-empathetic album with empathy? Thank you Caitlin. Who cares what the album sounds like we all know at this point what to expect tbqph

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AGQLRKywRqg/hqdefault.jpg

mistaking self-aggrandizement for some sort of brilliant coup against the system is what basically got trump elected, but ok

glad we're past describing what albums sound like, it's long gotten in the way of me shoehorning in mini-histories of my life as a music writer in brooklyn

brad you live in queens

shhh they'll hear you

lots of dirty projecting in this thread

This bad album is relatable to me bc I too am bad at my job

lmao

Hasaa

No for real I thought there were only two possible responses to this record, "I don't hear lyrics" vs. "This is some abusive bs", but Caitlin taking a more empathetic response mirrored my own listening to this record, and the concerns of "when honesty in artistry goes too far" or whatever

Also don't pin your fascist prez on me lol

I'm fine with the uproxx piece because

a) it is neither claiming nor trying to be a review, so critiquing it by that standard is off

b) it really doesn't discuss How The Music Sounds that much less than "actual reviews" do. take the review on pitchfork -- if you went through that with a highlighter and highlighted everything that discussed the music in concrete terms, the proportions would not be dissimilar. not to pick on that review -- it's just obviously one of the more higher-profile outlets, and...

c) discussing How The Music Sounds can lead one astray when How Said Music Sounds is portrayed as more innovative than it actually is. (I haven't heard the full album -- why do that to myself if I'm not getting paid, and I have the wrong opinion on this album to ever be paid for it -- but I would be very surprised, given even the positive reviews, if it were better than the tracks I have heard. Or if the parts that were better were dave's and not, say, dawn's.) I would rather read almost any personal essay than 500 words rhapsodizing about dave's groundbreakingly experimental use of 808s & Heartbreak vocoding.

d) discussing How The Music Sounds is fucking pointless when there's this undertone (or, sometimes, overtone) of condescension and contempt to everything. being able to ignore said undertone is only really possible if you don't experience it on a regular basis.

the only thing that bugs me really about the piece is the retroactive apology for calling the "first date with carly rae jepsen" piece shit. there's no need to apologize for that, the piece was in fact shit, and just because your ex wrote it doesn't change that fact. after all, one of the sole bright points of having an ex is a heightened ability to recognize when that person is being shit.

sure but the sentence i highlighted would be terrible if it had been talking about personal experience in a similar way (which the rest of the essay does; i see zero self reflection, just a lot of "greatest hits of me" linking and the word "regret" over and over). it's all broad strokes and imprecise words. the music doesn't necessarily have to be discussed more, but as a professional it should be done better

http://www.bkmag.com/2015/12/09/the-20-best-rap-albums-of-2015/

hm, i ever do wonder why Caitlin says

"Is this album more important than Dee Barnes? And if so, why is that?" about Dr. Dre's Compton, and

"Cold-blooded, sure, and deeply difficult listen to as a woman who cares about, oh I don’t know, being seen as a human being? ... Welcome to cognitive dissonance of the highest order, DS2 is a fucked-up velvety croaked masterpiece about unspeakable things. But maybe when we talk about Future, we should speak of them." about Future's DS2

but Dave Longstreth dragging his ex-girlfriend for a full album gets an empathetic ear

ok but i'd also like to point out that the review is poorly written which undermines its own approach

xp idk, maybe because some of us have been in abusive relationships with brilliant men and have experienced that remarkable cocktail of adoration and fear and hurt?

"My behavior in the wake of that breakup remains some of the most regretted in my entire life. That period contains my worst memories and many regretted decisions. I don’t know much, but I do know that publicly being an sh*thead to my ex after we broke up is currently my biggest regret."

like on a purely mechanical level this is horrible

also Whiney you have swum too far out I think, if you're wondering why she might have more to say about a problematic record made by a musician whose music she adores, as opposed to a rapper who she feels she can't enjoy because of his history of violence against women

i think you've swum out too far into a sea of wokeness if you think being an abuse victim excuses weird racist hypocrisy?

now I understand why in 1953 men self-medicated with martinis instead of going to therapy

at the risk of cross-platform manthreading I was debating on whether to include an e):

e) at this point it is going to take a lot of convincing (or a lot of unprecedented awfulness of concept, like, xojane's worst hits levels) to get me to join a pile-on of an OK personal essay by a woman on grounds of it not being music writing didion

like, there is not a single sentence in that entire piece that is not 1000 times better and betraying more self-reflection than "As we filed out, Haddaway's “What Is Love” played over the loudspeakers, prompting me to wonder once more, the only question that song prompts anyone to wonder: What is love?" (from the linked first-date-with-carly-rae-jepsen piece)

well, to be fair, no one said that was an example of great music writing on the Haddaway thread

fgti, do you think what Beyonce did to Jay Z on Lemonade was abusive?

lmaoooo

1st: whiney you're comparing end-of-year blurbs with a personal essay and saying she must be racist because of number of paragraphs-devoted-to and I'm sorry you are literally reaching so far here please somebody talk to the man right now so I don't feel crazy, also it is not at all my place or yours really to start a discussion about how white women are supposed to write about misogynist rap music, please somebody say something please

2nd: Frederik the implied violence-against-women that is present in this DP album is not present in the Beyonce record because of the opposite gender roles and also there is more conspicuousness on that record and its roll-out and subsequent nuptials suggesting that husband-and-wife felt it was an empowering and artistic statement for black women so no basically not at all; I did think that people going on "who is becky" scavenger hunts was closer to abusive behaviour

Wtf. What violence?

Have you even heard the record yet?