Dirty Projectors

Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste chimed in, too, with a screaming face emoji.

Ed Droste otm.

that was otm though, about GAPDY being the last time indie was proggy

― flopson, Friday, 10 February 2017 18:07 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone wants to be deluged in links

that is such a pathetically closed-minded perspective

also all those bands have made more records since 2009...

Ahhh this is awful

"Refined and effete, well removed from the rain drops and drop tops of lived, earned experience"

Lifting your guitar-style wholesale from Malian players, lyrics about listening to Tupac and Kanye, this is imo the most dangerous and insidious form of cultural white supremacy, that kind that is colonialism masquerading as wokeness

And if somebody uses "effete" as a pejorative again I will limp-wristedly pull a gun on them

god i wish jamie from xiu xiu hadn't deleted his tweet about Longstreth, it was something like "do you KNOW that Dave Longstreth is a /something/ with fucked ideas about colonialism?"

I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY PERSON WHO REMEMBERED THIS!

was something like 'racist notions about eastern european ethnicity' i think

Chipotle
Indie rock has been criticized as refined and effete for as long as I can remember, but I think a narrow focus on a certain strand of American indie rock masks how bands like Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra really are pushing music forward while influencing artists across genre lines. I think 2016 was an unusually weak year for indie rock, but 2015 and 2013 had lots of great stuff. But yes, you can't keep mining 90s lo-fi indie rock/Pavement forever and expect it to sound fresh.

02/10/17 9:43 AM+7REPLY

Chipotle
Also call me crazy, but I think 2017 will be a really good year for (indie) rock music. 2016 was dominated by great superstar R&B/hip-hop albums, so I think the time is more than ripe for a shift.

02/10/17 10:02 AM+8

lil wotie
my take is that rock music should move away from the "indie" sound of idkkkkk jangly guitars and delicate vocals...idk what effete means. Move to something harder that shreds

02/10/17 9:56 AM+10REPLY

Chipotle
Yup. Stooges/Stones/Faces/Led Zeppelin/Velvet Underground influence would be welcome and would sound super fresh.

02/10/17 10:10 AM+9

And once again ILX seems like a beacon of sanity.

I mean maybe we're all wrong

Maybe Dave Longstreth in fact invented Ali Farka Toure

Maybe he invented Black Flag also

I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY PERSON WHO REMEMBERED THIS!

was something like 'racist notions about eastern european ethnicity' i think

lmao yes!!!! i tweeted at him at the time like "JUICY DEETS SPILL THE BEANS!!!!!!"

Longstreth reminds me a lot of David Byrne: aloof, arrogant, annoying, constantly appropriating African music

I made the joke a few times before but Dirty Projectors reaallllllly living their band name these days

it would be "fun" to read a group intvw between Longstreth, JS, and Downtown Boys

I've tried to engage with DL one-on-one about serious stuff, but he's such a brainiac and he's clearly spent weeks upon weeks building up internal logic structures to excuse himself, explain himself, preserve the idea of his own genius. Maybe I'm just not on-the-ball enough to call him on his bullshit irl but it's like trying to play tower defence against a racist and misogynist Harvard graduate who knows every possible loophole

man who clearly spent weeks upon weeks building up internal logic structures to excuse himself is a pretty good summation of the new songs imo

“Complex plans and high ideals but he treats people poorly/Is a ceaseless ambitiousness proxy for a void he’s ignoring?” is the opening line from one of the tunes of his new album.

God that Insta post was fucking cringey.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/magazine/the-dirty-projectors-go-solo.html?_r=1

In between the previous record and this new one they did a fabulous duet version of Climax by Usher. Seemed loaded with significance at the time and now seems even more like an obvious portent of a breakup (album).

That's on the JJJ session for their Like A Version slot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_K-IbJYvE

It's streaming. And it's weird. A song like 'Work Together' is definitely new, but...

i love that this and the new xiu xiu record are coming out on the same day. longstreth is such a fucking asshole, the lyrics on this thing are absurd.

tbf JS is probably also an asshole but a much more interesting one imo

well like for instance the xiu xiu record ends with vaginal davis reading a list of lines jamie wrote about pictures of underage prostitutes he found on backpage and then reported - i think like most of his records, there's an enormous amount of empathy and a concerted effort to connect and acknowledge aspects of the human condition that are ignored even in the arts. the songs are really good, i think it's the best thing he's done in a while, but he puts out a lot of albums. this dirty projectors record is really immaculately produced, the music is really cool on most of it, but it's the most hilariously offensive and unintentionally mean set of lyrics i've ever seen. nagl, but sort of amazing and again hilarious

god i wish jamie's tweet was still up

christ the hours i've wasted looking for some trace of it

This is the first Dirty Projectors album I've been remotely excited to hear (that "Own Little Bubble" song is gorgeous, and the supporting cast is A+) but the guy is so toxic right now I don't even want to go near it.

Are the lyrics really that bad? I have a very low tolerance for one-sided, recriminatory lyrics pointed at an identifiable person, but the buzz around this is so bad you'd think the guy made a men's rights record. Or a Sun Kil Moon record.

There really are some awful, awful lines on this. But it's not as bad as Sun Kil Moon.

the lyrics are just very tin-eared, like i can't believe DL thought putting this out was a good idea - dirty laundry!

Are the lyrics really that bad? I have a very low tolerance for one-sided, recriminatory lyrics pointed at an identifiable person, but the buzz around this is so bad you'd think the guy made a men's rights record. Or a Sun Kil Moon record.

A couple of them stick out as being particularly bitter and they are, indeed, not a good look, others just seem more about wearing his pain about on the outside in a somewhat clunky manner, and the narrative album arcs away from the bitterness to acceptance by the end of it, which makes the lines in Keep Your Name (at the start) seem somewhat contextualized.

he probably (hopefully) knows those lyrics are nagl. this album is good.

I reviewed it and my thought was he was trying really really hard to express some really deep contempt while still thinking at the back of his brain "NO, NO MISOGYNY, CAN'T DO MISOGYNY." but also, like, dude, "your heart is saying clothing line / my body said Naomi Klein, No Logo"? really? really dude.

(said review: http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=22989)

I like the 'no logo' shout, it makes it seem like a Kanye rap. Also, the next lines are pretty great: "We shared kisses and visions / But like KISS' shithead Gene Simmons said: / A band is a brand and it looks that our vision is dissonant"

I think my main problem is that he keeps calling her a sellout. It really does seem to mostly be about wearing his pain on the outside, but he keeps hitting that beat over and over and over so it becomes much uglier.

oh, that Naomi Klein line is awful! katherine otm - also the lyric sheet says "Drinking a Fifth For My Ass"

Given the prevalence of misogyny on social media the easily quoted sellout stuff just seems so ill-thought out and cruel.

What's wonderful bout thinking about these people is that Longstreth's at best OK and often awful singing makes his words indecipherable anyway.

I disagree. I thought the lyrics on Swing Lo Magellan were quite good, and most intelligible

haven't heard the new one, except I liked the song w/ dawn. but of course I'm biased bc ILM made me a dawn stan back in the diddy dirty money days

DL's singing sounds good but also like every phrase is overdubbed

I like the 'no logo' shout, it makes it seem like a Kanye rap

oh no you made me hate it more

that part is bad, true

but cool your heart is amazing

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