Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan

You're asking the dude who likes TKK, Skinny Puppy, Diamanda Galas, Sinead O'Connor, PJ Harvey, Naked City, GOD, etc etc why he doesn't like music that makes his skin crawl?

they're your words not mine!

also I have decided I really really REALLY like "See What She Seeing". started worrying that I picked the most conventional/accessible song to like, but then I relistened and remembered that, as beautiful as it is, it's also pretty fuckin weird!!

listened to this a couple times today. formed some opinions about it. middle 1/3rd kinda forgettable? last half better? idk

― visions of kreayshawn with joanna newsom (bernard snowy), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 6:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

first 4 songs and last 2 songs are the best, i think. maybe i just get tired in the middle though.

a couple of things:

u crazy/maybe it's on purpose? e.g. the part ~3:00 into "Useful Chamber" with the super-grating wide-open singing.

Why are you using a song from the previous album to refute a comment I made about the new album?

why don't you want music to make your skin crawl?!

This is a flat-out asinine question given the music I listen to and talk about on this board regularly (industrial/goth) and it's fucking tiring. Liking something in one context does not automatically translate to liking something in another context, and sometimes a performer just is not your thing. The women in Dirty Projectors, by and large, are not my thing. The songwriting, while odd for the context of indie rock, is not at all odd in the context of the choral milieu I spend most of my performance life in, so a lot of the astonishment and novelty that seems to draw many people to this band reads to me as old-hat appropriation. This is why, aside from a song or two, Dirty Projectors has never really appealed to me.

What I am expressing on this thread is that many of the same irritating factors are still there on this new album but I am enjoying it a hell of a lot more. Things seem to be happening in service of a song as opposed to being in service of themselves and the various components make more sense to me as blocks in the composition, as opposed to signposts of "look at this cool parlor trick we're going to kind of do that no one else around us could even pretend to try so our half-assed effort ends up looking magnificent in comparison". Dirty Projectors is never going to be my favorite band unless they replace the women with singers who occasionally raise their soft palettes or they start screaming about Satan and gogo boots over clanking machinery, but I enjoyed listening to this album.

My asinine question was meant in a good-natured way. I'm glad you responded at length, I didn't want to make assumptions about yr reasons for liking or not-liking or whatever. I cited the song from the past album because it is, I think, an excellent example of an "irritating factor" (trust me, it irritates me too -- I think it may just be objectively irritating!) being used as a building block in an outstanding composition... it's weird, your comments about the song structures here are basically exactly how I felt/thought about the last one as I was warming up to it, so it's hard for me to fit them into a narrative about the band "evolving" or w/e

Yeah I waver a bit on their voices too. I think they're interesting, almost like a greek chorus, but sometimes the extreme brightness grates on me.

i really like this album. the stripped down, almost folksiness of it is a really good look.

"dance for you" is amazing

good album good band

wow, this is really, really good.

i need to check out their debut at some point as i also loved their last album.

they have like four other albums

before bitte orca/swing lo magellan. maybe more than four.

no way to know

haven't heard the whole thing yet but i love the recording/production, each instrument has a ton of character and space

i guess i'm the only person annoyed by the weak/boring drumming

i like the album a lot as a whole, that's just the one aspect that bothers me. it sounds like he wanted to use loops and ended up using live drums instead.

"unto caesar" is so cute!

best percussion was all the micro rattling cowbell stuff on the getty address. thought this wld be kitsch & boring based on gun has no trigger + dave longstreth's new haircut, but it's p fun - less disjointed, smoother - but i still wish there was a bit more sourness to go w/ all that sweetness. longstreth is such a superb brat, this is still their finest hour imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8QTJs09vXg

No argument from me

The deconstructed art-rock stuff appeals to me very much - Bitte Orca was like an out-of-nowhere surprise - but I actually think I like them best when it's just straight ahead and pretty and easy to connect to. The title track of Swing Lo, Magellan is probably my pick of it so far. But I think it's going to really really grow on me, maybe insanely so ....

I'm in love with this album

ya these melodies are so so good. spent all day yesterday quietly humming "See What She Seeing" to myself as I bussed tables. thank u basedlongstreth

Yeah that song just hit me really hard on the subway this morning, the ecstatic part where he sings "She's lookin at me and/I can see what she's seein!"

And the last song slays me -- it's like an existential cowboy ballad recorded at Sun Studios.

He does so many neat things compositionally - his melodies always have a way of tricking the ear, like the first track, where it has this almost romanian modal feel, but the line resolves down to this unexpected B minor chord, and then the second time an unexpected E major chord.

http://stereogum.com/1085721/dirty-projectors-david-longstreth-on-wonderful-rainbows-being-vulnerable-and-the-cowardice-in-modern-music/top-stories/lead-story/

Pretty good interview, although Longstreth comes off as a bit stoned/burnt at times and the interviewer is a bit too sycophantish.

maybe just the title, but "Irresponsible Tune" made me of think Cole Porter the other day for some reason

wait I meant George Gershwin, owell close enough

Maybe it’s this contrarian streak in me or whatever, but I like to look at what I’ve been doing and then turn around and do the exact opposite thing. For the last few records, to look at what I’ve been doing, I’ve been withdrawing to an even further and further vantage to get a stronger sense of what is the exact opposite thing. Like, is the opposite of North Brooklyn “South Brooklyn,” or is the opposite of North Brooklyn “South San Francisco," you know, that kind of thing.

lolol

yeah that line, oh man

just came here to say that he did a great job with his hair

i guess i'm the only person annoyed by the weak/boring drumming

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:08 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like the album a lot as a whole, that's just the one aspect that bothers me. it sounds like he wanted to use loops and ended up using live drums instead.

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:08 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! I always hated how stiff and bland the drumming is on their records. I agree about the loop theory. They need someone jazzier, but still restrained since there is enough busyness created by the rest of the band; could get messy.

He's expressed a lot of admiration for Bjork, and I think sometimes he goes for a Bjork feel with the drums. I mean some of this does sound like drum programming though - is it really all live drums?

the new black haired singer is hot hot hot

oh man great stuff coming out in the late night headphone session. Irresponsible Tune has this crazy stereo vocal effect that I think may be just two separated, slightly off vocal tracks both with that sun-style short slapback echo, so it's like echo squared.

Longstreth's hair these days is a thing of wonder.

"I boogie down gargoyle streets"

I keep lolling at the image of Longstreth doing this

i guess i'm the only person annoyed by the weak/boring drumming

i thought this would bother me more, but i like how everything's even more centered round vocals+guitars compared to the last record. really liking this.

boss single, terrible album

His decision to relegate the women to supporting parts so that he can sing badly.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, April 14, 2012 8:22 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is still my main beef with this band. I hoped the new album would change up the formula a bit and focus more on the female vocals, but that hasn't really happened. Lots of nice music, lots of potential, but there's only so much of his singing that I can take.

IDK the track that features the female vocals the most is my least favorite on the record (The Socialites). I get that the signing on it is sacharine in quotes, but I still don't like it.

he is not egregiously worse than the women he is singing with

so weird to me when people say stuff like that, it's been longstreth's band for like five albums now, why would he suddenly change the sound completely by putting himself in the background? also his vocals are like the no. 1 most distinctive thing about dirty projectors, they would be way more boring with just the female singers.

n/a otm

not targeting moodles specifically, i always think it's weird when people say they would like a band if they would just eliminate the thing that's most interesting about them. like maybe you just don't like that band?

i liked the female vox-only songs on bitte orca but yeah the socialites is easily the worst song on swing lo magellan

n/a otm again

it's also weird to say that a band that's very much directed by a single person should feature other members of the band more

I sometimes feel like ppl are startled by the female singers' ability to count tricky rhythms and therefore think the actual singing they're doing is mindblowingamazing when you could replace most (if not all) of them with members of a halfway decent college choir and get the exact same result

obv this is a wholly uncharitable feeling and heavily informed by the experiences I had in college

There are some clips up of them doing the new material at Music Hall of Williamsburg and elsewhere, and they're kind of underwhelming, like the band isn't comfortable enough with the songs to get loose (which can happen with heavily composed songs). I hope I'll get to see them at some point during this cycle though

socialites is terrible but not because of the singing. most other songs would be better w/someone else singing, except gun has no trigger which is actually a v.compelling vocal

I like the About to Die EP -- all new songs other than the title cut, all solid.

listened to this album last week for the first time since it came out and I still really dig it

i've listened to this a bunch of times since it came out but it is just now, as i am writing, "clicking" for me. i love when things "click." Gun Has No Trigger has a really amazing memory. i am thinking of noir movies for some reason.

*melody

He has a way of writing melodies that slightly frustrate your expectations of where they should go, like Gun Has No Trigger, the way it goes up to the fourth at the end of "you might just have seen them" (on "them")

the best thing about longstreth is that he is an awkward try-hard

i agree. it seems like it would be an irritating quality but it's not, it's endearing. coolness/apathy is, for indie stars, out of date i think

yeah, even that song, the way it's a thoughtful and subtle but angry rebuke -- it's actually very sincere and direct for the kind of music it is

pretty good iirc, but maybe not as good as its predecessor. maybe.

ha, i just listened to Bitte Orca today. such a fantastic album. listened to it right after Shaking the Habitual and loved it so much more than the Knife album.

This album is 10 years old this month.

I enjoy plenty of music that DPs/Dave made before and since, but this is my favorite album and the others* aren't particularly close.

*With the exception of Bitte Orca, which I may have killed for myself through overplaying.