Dirty Projectors

Great review, Katherine. I was just thinking about how I don't envy the critics who review this. It's a total mine field.

Awesome review, Katherine :)

is this out yet?

it's on Spotify, will listen tomorrow.

Amazing work Katherine

ya that's really good writing... Dirty Projectors SHANKED

i'm too scared to revis Bitte Orca (which i adored at the time) but, his singing definitely got worse, right?

he's repeatedly attempted to explain the lyrics in interviews with claims that they aren't always as autobiographical and direct as they seem and that he was trying to take a somewhat abstract approach to the breakup, but i don't think that approach was successful at all.

Cool Your Heart & Little Bubble are nice but the rest feels so unfocused and messy, even ignoring the lyrics.

someone should compile all the worst lines from reviews of bjork's last album and construct a DP review from them

Everyone needs to take lessons from Kevin Barnes in how to air that laundry

a state of emergency

x-post: I don't know is calling girls 'faggy' or threatening to get her beat up was ever a better look...

hey man it was 2007, things were crazy... george w bush was still in office, "what what in the butt" had just gone viral, and we were still two years away from GAPDY...

yeaaaahhh as an occasional fan I would caution against using Kevin Barnes as any kind of behavioral model (I think he'd agree tbh)

Ha, I've often wondered if Barnes realizes how unacceptable Hissing Fauna is by today's standards. He made two and a half albums as a trans black person named Georgie Fruit and no major outlet called him out on it.

One thing he did get right though is making a breakup album(s) with clear affection for the ex in question. Hearing about the crisis that results from losing your support system is way more interesting than the Longstreth/Drake ex-shaming approach.

joining the chorus of "outstanding review, katherine"

i find the preoccupation with the lyrics strange and a bit suspect, but then again i'm a straight guy. looking forward to listening to the whole albumin

they're pretty hard to ignore

Ha, I've often wondered if Barnes realizes how unacceptable Hissing Fauna is by today's standards. He made two and a half albums as a trans black person named Georgie Fruit and no major outlet called him out on it.

― Evan R, Thursday, February 23, 2017 9:41 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think about this all the time. not just wrt Of Montreal, but in general how much problematic shit hipsters got away with only 10 years ago that they would get dragged for now

yeah i mean Dan Deacon has a song called "I Have AIDS" on his first album

the recruitment of Kanye and Tupac and Roberta Flack and Molly Bloom as the unvolunteered Greek chorus of a mundane twentysomething relationship

screaming

amazing rvw katherine

there was this one thread, i think about jay-z, discussing the phenomenon where an artist's contemporary horribleness retroactively taints their early work, because with hindsight you can hear the rot setting in. that dynamic seems in place here for me ... this is foregrounding all my latent distaste for dude and his thing

just re-read, so dope. channeling early-ilx density + vitriol

this is.....not great but lolling at everyone falling over themselves to kill the guy from dirty projectors

GAPDY shall fall, one by one

karen o will turn out to be a spider-squasher

I feel like I have to give this a chance because I liked the last couple of albums, but I also think I'm going to end up regretting it

I legit love Dirty Projectors. I think what really gets under my skin about this is not just the fact that I think the thesis of this record is tantamount to abuse, but that there is a larger weirder paradigm represented, the paradigm of "successful"-musicians-responding-poorly-to-a-bear-market. Everything about that Tumblr post and every Kanye- and Tupac-reference, it just screams of a person clinging to their perceived relevancy of yesterday instead of existing in the present-tense, and allowing their divestment from industry expectation to be a liberating force, artistically. I guess I just wish somebody as talented as DL clearly is would work to prove to all of us that his music is necessary in 2017. This is part of the reason why I have so much respect for Sufjan I guess, who I didn't ever love at his zenith, but became really passionate about as he continued to burn every previous record as he went

great post

putting aside the content that really nails it, this record was made by someone who thinks it's still 2008 and also desperately needs an editor

It's a good album! But with horrible lyrics. And it's not just the misogyny - though that would be enough - but the guy just isn't a very good storyteller, and he was more interesting when he was just yelling Bitte Orca Orca Orca Bitte. Musically, it's cool, though.

idk I heard "Work Together" and thought I heard a cat playing a Mellotron.

booming post, fgti

CAD otm

yeah otm. it's such a bummer because i love the way he puts music together, which is no small thing.

I am trying to give this a fair shake but I'm only on track 2 and already gritting my teeth

the phrase "inept hipster Timberlake" keeps popping up in my head

(that is a specific reaction to "Death Spiral", not a description of DP overall)

i had some hope based on up in hudson but i think that's the only song here w/a decent chorus and it's 7 and a half minutes long.

the auto-tune stuff is actually embarrassing

a few of the beats are so 2007-era Burial.

Ha, I've often wondered if Barnes realizes how unacceptable Hissing Fauna is by today's standards. He made two and a half albums as a trans black person named Georgie Fruit and no major outlet called him out on it.

― Evan R, Thursday, February 23, 2017 9:41 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think about this all the time. not just wrt Of Montreal, but in general how much problematic shit hipsters got away with only 10 years ago that they would get dragged for now

― flopson, Thursday, February 23, 2017 10:09 AM (forty-eight minutes ago)

yeah i generally view askance the recent impulse among critics (and "critics") to snap-pan any kind of art that fails to flatter intersectionalist twitter sensibilities, but even as a big fan of that period of of montreal it is a bit shocking to think about what he got away with. that said, he made some great art, and sometimes great art is messy

idk I heard "Work Together" and thought I heard a cat playing a Mellotron.

I'm on this song now and laughing my ass off thanks to this comment

xp otm. i was gearing up to defend this record b/c if a guy needs to work through his breakup and sound like an asshole sometimes that's not really that huge of a crime, unfortunately the music isn't worth defending.

someone should compile all the worst lines from reviews of bjork's last album and construct a DP review from them

― mookieproof, Thursday, February 23, 2017 12:41 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vulnicura is a pretty good comparison point here, actually -- a huge amount of autobiographical breakup feelings, but very little contempt. (a lot of reviews of "stonemilker" for instance seemed flabbergasted at the idea that someone might talk about "emotional respect".)

as far as the "slap-panning" of art that "fails to flatter intersectionalist twitter sensibilities" in this thread, well, a) I didn't like dirty projectors to begin with and the year of our lordfuckoff GAPDY was particularly suffocating in terms of what was allowed to be seen as good; b) I get steeped in enough contempt in life, I really don't need it in art, particularly when there is other art to listen to instead

as far as "Everything about that Tumblr post and every Kanye- and Tupac-reference, it just screams of a person clinging to their perceived relevancy of yesterday instead of existing in the present-tense, and allowing their divestment from industry expectation to be a liberating force, artistically." goes (sorry, cross-responding to a lot): I don't know which Tumblr post you're talking about, but as for the latter, sure, it might be that, but it seems more likely that virtually every less-interesting-than-he-thinks twentysomethingdude thinks that the fact that he listens to well-known rap artists is noteworthy.

Or that a guy whose lyrics are really really referential might reference rap artists every once in a while.

Oh, I was referring to that Instagram post, sorry, not a Tumblr post

i think Up in Hudson is a masterpiece, despite the lyrics, another really nasty one i forgot to mention - "And we both had girl and boyfriends blowing us up SMS / But we both knew a mood like this so strong would be wrong to suppress" - airing out that your partner cheated, hmm... no good! also talk about being stuck in the aughts with the SMS reference

i think the music on this bar the dull keep your name is great nonetheless, death spiral and work together included. cool your heart just keeps getting better and better also.

From Winner Takes Nothing: "The truth is you'd sell out the waterfront for condos and malls"