Dirty Projectors

i've heard this whole album already, jaxon, as well as previous albums by them. i don't like what i've heard.

i liked s&s's two records but a "poppy version" of them sounds weak.

and animal collective = they might be giants. fuck that.

http://www.daytrotter.com/download/311/id=383

woe, he's playing his guitar upside down

ALL THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS ERUPTING IN BACHATA AND REGGAETON !

in four thousand years rise above #1 will just be a footnote in the backstories for rise above #2 and Johnny Mnemonic

i don't actually think i like this :-/

given the album one listen so far. entirely baffled, i must say. what the hell is it?

I haven't heard this but the Getty Address was fantastic. Especially Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego. It sounds like him and a choir of dodgy tape players.

Not sure about Dirty Projectors. I enjoyed watching the aztec-intensive dvd of the Getty Address but all their stuff seems to wear thin once you get the hang of it.

I just got Getty Address. I like it so far, although it feels a bit too conscious of what it's doing at times. Better than Animal Collective, for sure.

i really like this band, but lately the lyrics really bug me. not even his weird singing voice, just the lyrics themselves. the rest of it is so meticulous and then that part is just kind of phoned in...

It has a bit of that same Dr. Spock baby "look what an eclectic, self-expressive genius I am" thing that annoys me about Animal Collective

you could call it just *being* an eclectic, self-expressive genius.

sorry i am not an easy-to-categorize average artist

wait, are you Dave Longstreth?

s0rr7 1 m38n D8v3 104657r37h

no, i have never even heard this band, i just get tired of the criticism of people being too aware or consious of how they sound. are some people making a record by accident?

yeah

how is being conscious of your sound a bad thing?

talk about cockism

yeah, i'd take overly composed music over another sloppy jam band anyday.

I don't necessarily mean it's over-composed

I know.

Really though, I think the "look at me!" with acts like this is more in the listener who's threatened by like the flamboyant content or something.

I mean wouldn't saying a rapper gave off the vibe "lok at me, I'm an eclectic self-expressive genius" usually be a compliment?

i listened to some of this. i didn't even get the black flag thing at all. sometimes stuff like this seems like it was written with a press release first, just to bait rock writers, then do the album after it.

there's also the possibility that people WANT to make music that sounds different

not that this is the differentest band ever... but compared to a good deal of indie rock they are

i really like this band, but lately the lyrics really bug me. not even his weird singing voice, just the lyrics themselves. the rest of it is so meticulous and then that part is just kind of phoned in...

wait the black flag part of the lyrics ?

uhh what? not all of their songs are black flag covers...i haven't even listened to the one that is

err the one album that is. i was mostly talking about getty address and the glad fact.

When I saw them live I kept thinking "Jesus, shut that guy up and let the girls sing." Then I got a promo of the album (whatever one was before the Black Flag thing) and kept thinking, "Oh, you precious fuck, shut the hell up and let the girls sing."

Oh, and to answer the years-old question: No, the reason that no one wrote about this is not because it was too complicated. It was because if you like complicated music, this is disappointing and if you like poppy music, this is annoying. It hits the same dilettante weirdness level as Animal Collective.

i'm kind of afraid to listen to the black flag covers.

<i>i'm kind of afraid to listen to the black flag covers.</i>

You should be...it's awful stuff.

I mean wouldn't saying a rapper gave off the vibe "lok at me, I'm an eclectic self-expressive genius" usually be a compliment?

-- vadx, Friday, October 5, 2007 4:06 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

http://a50.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/57/l_0b1d00fb0cbac50784cbdde0b6718d59.jpg

NO

C'mon, ILM! No love for Rise Above? This is a kick-ass record.

Oh yeah, I played Six Pack on my radio show about a month ago.
Really cool.

i'm revisiting this now (it's getting a whole lot of love around montreal, randomly) and i've decided it's great. more the beginning than the end, though, i think.

"Rise Above" is the best thing on it.

i too had my misgivings about this band but the absolutely killed it last night in portland. fuck. like why do i even try to make music?? one of those shows ...

interesting fact: apparently ezra koenig of vampire weekend was a dirty projector between 2002-05. the fuck?~!?

I read this http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=6538 article in the newspaper. I didn't know until just now that Dirty Projectors were supposed to be fake afropop. I thought they were supposed to be Don Caballero with sick lyrics and harmonies over it.

Has the singer guy from Dirty Projectors ever said himself that he is ripping off black people, or is it just a music journalist overlay? I always thought their sound was just math rock. (Or is it that math rock is ripping off black people??)

Please clarify, thanks.

he does use some afro-pop guitar work on his records, guitar picking techniques and such, but it's not like it's anything new in rock to do this.

Has the singer guy from Dirty Projectors ever said himself that he is ripping off black people

haha, no, i don't think so

also this :

Vampire Weekend; Arctic Monkeys of 2008?

for an indepth discussion that would prove interesting to you, if you take issue with that article

Has the singer guy from Dirty Projectors ever said himself that he is ripping off black people, or is it just a music journalist overlay? I always thought their sound was just math rock. (Or is it that math rock is ripping off black people??)

All I know of Dirty Projectors is whatever the ~hour long animated thing on pitchfork.tv is (which is pretty consistently great, actually) and a live show I caught in Ithaca a few months back. Neither one of those sounded remotely like what you're describing.

Seeing them live just solidified how fucking great they are for me.. They did mostly 'Rise Above' stuff and it all sounded stunning...the amazing harmonies, the gobsmacking guitar work...it just sounded effortless and brilliant.

I get the feeling they've yet to do their best stuff though. And folks who lump 'em in with Vampire Weekend are just wrong, if anyone actually does who has heard them both.

There's some sproingy guitar that suggests they've listened to a few afropop records, but to lump them in with a movement like that is selling them way short--they are playing with the full musical deck and have been for a few albums now.

How is Dirty Projectors anything like Vampire Weekend? I mean, they're both indie Ivy League bands in New York City, but Dirty Projectors is somewhere in the "weirdy beardy" brand whereas Vampire Weekend's more like MTV pop.

I've had Rise Above for a few months. "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie" is very good and the title track is nice, but the rest doesn't do much to tickle my giblets. Is any of their other stuff worth getting?

I love the way this guy wails. im not too keen on how some of 'The Getty Address' sounds. I find the plonker percussion really grating, but the arrangements are mostly great. 'New Attitude' is my pick. The track 'Fucked For Life' is incredible. You get a sense that with such a strong voice, and the ability to find those snatches of awesome melodic counterparts that there is an ability to just not be so damn difficult with the songs, but i adore how it just is.

Slaves' Graves and Ballads!

new album has leaked and is pretty amazing

That Phoenix compilation with the Rise Above cover (while I was in the middle of rediscovering Damaged) made me curious enough to want to hear this. The Getty Address was pretty great imo.

I've had "Stillness is the Move" on repeat since yesterday

new one is pretty pretty good. very schizophrenic.

new album has leaked and is pretty amazing

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, April 10, 2009 6:23 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

love this. "no intention" and "two doves" are each magnificent

it's like if matthew friedberger wrote vampire weekend an album

the press release said that dave wrote everything for these EPs, except for the lyrics which were a collaboration between him and whichever band member is singing lead for each EP

felicia's other band gemma i really good, i've been really into their album feeling's not a tempo lately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZtETeYGVYM

I read that DL collaborated with Kyle from Little Wings on the lyrics for Super João

I hope they do a bananas orchestral EP amongst the later releases too

― in twelve parts (lamonti), Thursday, May 7, 2020 8:24 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

✓

Ha I was just thinking of that prediction. Will the last one be a big groovy Bitte Orca vibe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzhCV1nla7g

last EP out soon

love this one

the tiny desk concert was lovely.

great track

the full 5EPs works quite nicely as a whole, it's all pleasantly relaxed while covering quite a few different sounds yet remains cohesive

I got my box set during the week. It's a beautiful package, worth the investment made in March!

Does anyone else find the album (particularly the Earth Crisis segment) profoundly depressing/anxiety-provoking, or do I need to have a talk with my psychiatrist

super joao and earth crisis playlists now up on spotify

Both playlists are great.

Earth Crisis one is a big compendium of a lot of the stuff DL has mentioned over the years as influential on his composing for chamber ensembles, lots of Mahler lieder.

The Super Joao won has lots of great Brazilian stuff on it (unsurprisingly)

The Brazilian one is great, ty

Does anyone else find the album (particularly the Earth Crisis segment) profoundly depressing/anxiety-provoking, or do I need to have a talk with my psychiatrist

― handsome boy modelling software (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 1 December 2020 12:29 (one week ago) link

fwiw, not with this specifically, but I have definitely had that experience where at particular times, I'll be hyper-sensitive to particular records.

first is — i’m moving the newsletter over to substack! i’ve become a big fan of the platform and am excited to be a part of it. if you’ve been subscribed to the newsletter, there will be no change. the substack is called well-tempered zealot, and it’ll just be a cozy, maybe slightly messy, little corner of the internet where i can share stuff. melodic amoebae, chord petri dishes, lowercase rants, notes to self, crayon drawings, poems photographed in the mirror so you can only read them backwards. that kind of thing. i won’t post too often; once every week-or-two-ish? from time to time i’ll update — or my handsome & equanimous managers david newgarden and jake abrams will update — with pertinent information like show and album announcements.

we’ll see what kind of a flow we get into. i want to keep the stakes low but i’m secretly very excited.

...over the weekend i had the pleasure of participating in a show in los angeles celebrating the life and work of david berman, the poet and songwriter behind the bands silver jews and purple mountains. it was organized, on the occasion of what would’ve been berman’s 58th birthday (1/4/2025), by the folks behind jokermen, the best podcast on the internet for deep dives into the oeuvres of the deep divers (by which i mean great songwriters). ana nersessian, who i went to school with twenty years ago and hadn’t seen in forever, read harmony korine’s 2019 eulogy for david. it was beautiful and wrenching and mind-blowing, and if it exists anywhere on the internet i encourage you to seek it out.
i played a short set of three favorite DCB numbers — guard my bed, black and brown blues, and (need to) random rules. next morning i tumbled out of bed straight into a couple microphones so i could record ‘em.. so please enjoy this, my belated DCB birthday covers EP, for streaming or free download:

And the orchestral record is done - https://dirtyprojectors.bandcamp.com/album/song-of-the-earth

first is — i’m moving the newsletter over to substack! i’ve become a big fan of the platform and am excited to be a part of it. if you’ve been subscribed to the newsletter, there will be no change. the substack is called well-tempered zealot

Honestly everything about this is just screams 'red flag.'

Why??

Listening parties for new alb, also incl solo performances live

https://www.dirtyprojectors.net/concerts?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

after the album, i’ll play a solo set of songs old and new. if you have requests, throw ‘em in the comments or message to me on this platform. (i brook no requests from instagram or twitter. only substack).
dirtyprojectors at substack dot com

we’re only doing this in new york and los angeles for now, and attendance to each event is limited to 155 (nyc) and 250 (la). ticket is at the close-to-fugazi-adjusted-for-inflation price of $20.

...the soundsystem will be very good. (in brooklyn, in particular — it’s an OJAS). we’re gonna chill and listen to this crazy thing. See ya there!

Anyone read that New Yorker profile?

I found the profile fascinating though I’ve never knowingly heard the band and don’t intend to change that.

I read it. Must admit that my first reaction to seeing it was "a Dirty Projectors profile? in *2025*??"

Ha...I'm a fan of the music, and having been online in the Hipster Runoff/Pitchfork era I was familiar with all the beats. Not super surprised to see it since they have a prestige orchestral climate change-themed record coming out. I guess I was a tiny bit surprised that the tone was so, idk, skeptical? Mostly house NYer style, and all the quotes from his former collaborators where interesting, but then the bits like this:

At one point, trying to convey the song’s intended energy, he played me the opening to Nirvana’s “Floyd the Barber,” then pulled up photographs of a Butoh performance. This was inscrutable.

Idk, that doesn't seem particularly inscrutable to me, using artistic comparisons to capture the feeling of what someone is trying to capture in music.

Had, I had the same thought Jordan, he's clearly showing two influences, not really that inscrutable to me.

I knew the vague outlines of the split from Coffman, but I didn't realize quite how many bridges Longstreth has managed to burn. It seems like very few wanted to talk about him at all, the quote of "I will no long perform unpaid labor on Dave's behalf" was telling.

For sure. I did enjoy the snapshot of late '00s Brooklyn, where getting your indie prog band to rehearse for 12 hours a day to become insanely proficient was both economically viable and a worthwhile investment.

(although today you would just put it on social media and could probably spin it into something, chops are maybe more popular than ever).

that reminds me of that Grizzly Bear feature that Nabisco wrote for NYMag in 2012 that asked how indie-rock success at that time actually translated economically. (conclusion essentially being that they were by no means starving but also not doing as well as some people might have thought.)

Whole alb is on Bandcamp (and elsewhere)
https://dirtyprojectors.bandcamp.com/album/song-of-the-earth?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

https://pwelverumandsun.substack.com/p/live-with-dirty-projectors?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1177739&post_id=160811859&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=clgib&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

(I confess that I didn't get very far with that).

Song of the Earth Instrumentals out now---haven't listened to this version yet, but strongly suspect I'll enjoy it more than when I had to lean around those vocals--whole thing is here (and on other streamers)
https://dirtyprojectors.bandcamp.com/album/song-of-the-earth-instrumentals?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2255969643_10.jpg

Dave sez:

painting by kyle thomas

song of the earth instrumentals

they say a song is a landscape, but if you add even a single voice it becomes a portrait. so we’re rewilding the meadows. for an album inspired by natural places, this is an organic development. Song of the Earth Without Us.

i love listening this way because it feels closer to the experience of dreaming. melody floats, harmony shimmers, rhythms swirl. words, those tethers into the hard world of discrete materials, are nowhere.