Dirty Projectors

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"

i think that's a reach

That's another nasty one for me. Especially in an indie context, though he follows up with the sorta self-deprecating: "I'd throw the dice with the rest of 'em Down on Broad Street and Wall"

christ

if anything it is a bit relieving to know I am not overreacting to a couple unrepresentative lyrics

yeah that's the second worst line on the album imho.

Well, we're still just talking about a couple lyrics, katherine. There's a lot of 'I'm destructive' 'I did you wrong' 'never listened', all that stuff. But the attacks are just always on the same note.

Luckily for me as a non-native english speaker I can listen to english songs without understanding or focusing on lyrics most of the time (I'm missing on too much country/folk/hiphop because of that) but even without the lyrics I can't get into Dirty Projectors... their whole sound is very fey to me, even when Amber was around - she had a great tone to her voice but DP's music has these constant awkward shifts that try to emulate african music but fail miserably imho.

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

― Frederik B, Thursday, February 23, 2017 9:54 AM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"ok i might be a dick but you ruined williamsburg"

lol

I've often wondered if Barnes realizes how unacceptable Hissing Fauna is by today's standards

guess it depends on how hard of a line you draw wrt pushing identity boundaries vs exploiting them, this statement seems like goalpost shifting to me

Best thing I can say about this record is that it's slightly better at doing this seemingly scattered sound than whatever it was that last Bon Iver album.

god, I wish I could understand the sort of mindset that allows one to write things like "we built Brooklyn together but now you made it all waterfronts" without a thousand inner critics screaming "NO, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, WHY ARE YOU CONFLATING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GENTRIFICATION OF WILLIAMSBURG, IDK HOW THAT THOUGHT EVEN EMANATED FROM YOUR CONSCIOUS OR SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN BUT BUDDY, IT STOPS HERE."

perhaps it's better not to have that kind of mindset! (that certainly is the mainstream viewpoint; god knows that said inner critics tend not to shut up about *anything*, legit or not.) but at least it would prevent such lyrics from making it out of the brain

is his ex a property developer

(I paraphrased, but only slightly)

idk I think a lot of this stuff that scans as mortifyingly cringey and verboten to us, for most in its target demo it will go down smooth as a knowing, hip, smart, self-aware, etc as ilxors felt abt 'losing my edge' in 2001

Fantastic takedown on SJ, Katherine.

I'm with fgti in that I legit loved most of DP's previous work. The blatant misogyny on this is too much though, for me. I won't be bothering with the whole record.

oh sure, admittedly I am not the target demographic for this. (target*ed* demographic, maybe)

I can't get over that instagram chat with fleet foxes guy - maybe less *bad* than this ex-shaming but just as repellent

i didn't think it was that bad, read like something plaxico and Lamp wld've written in 2010

lmao

boom

i'm not really sure who the target demo for this stuff is tbh

GAPDY veterans

passionate millennial males

There's a part of me that wonders if maybe it was a reasonably civil breakup and his brain is going "hmmm, I have to write lyrics for an album, that's an experience that humans have emotions about, let me write about this experience in an emotional way so that the humans will like it" and then went way too far, and in misguided directions.

Obviously I'm projecting here, but thinking of people I know who are long on music theory and short on empathy.

i'm not really sure who the target demo for this stuff is tbh

That's what confounds me about this. The target demo is clear—the same educated, plugged-in, open-minded, privileged indie rock listeners with all the stereotypes that entails (NPR, Williamsburg, #indiesowhite, etc). But that's also the demographic most likely to be offended by this content. And that's even before you take in the fact that he's badmouthing a former bandmate who remains enormously popular with fans of the band.

xp I could see that - convenient narrative, the fact that him and Coffman were on speaking terms until a year ago (presumably when he started getting deep into writing & recording this record), and the fact that he has a new girlfriend and doesn't seem all that sad, it's all a pose (dirty sweater, unkempt beard). i took a look at his twitter and he said something on valentine's day about "dismantling co-dependency!" uhhh ok guy

uh am i missing something these lyrics just seem douchey, psuedy, and kinda misogynist - which is really pretty commonplace in music, especially of the confessional, earnest variety.

i didn't think it was that bad, read like something plaxico and Lamp wld've written in 2010

― flopson, Thursday, February 23, 2017 1:32 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permali

i didn't think it was bad at all either and i think most of the negative reaction to the new record (aside from fgti who seems to have deigned to engage with the music) is mostly half-baked virtue signaling ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

he is maroning