Dirty Projectors Go Ask Willy

ARTIST: Dirty Projectors TITLE: Bitte Orca RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2009 WEB DEBUT: April 9, 2009

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: From where I’m sitting, Dave Longstreth’s band has had an odd ascent onto the doorstep of indie stardom. The album I thought would’ve been their breakthrough, 2005’s The Getty Address, was a weird, complex, and fascinating rock opera about Don Henley and America (sort of), built from fragments of female choirs and string arrangements and percussion informed more by a composition major’s reference points than an indie fan’s, all overlaid with Longstreth’s unpredictable, wandering vocal lines. It had character and excitement out the yin-yang, so to speak, but it seemed to fall flat. Instead, Longstreth gained attention for his next album, a conceptual cover of Black Flag’s Rise Above. Maybe because it was an easier idea for listeners to grasp, or maybe because the band had become a real band in the meantime and that was easier to love. Regardless, it seemed obvious that Rise Above was a far lesser effort than Getty, more interesting in concept than execution, and not even all that interesting in concept.

With Bitte Orca, though, the promise of Getty and the accessibility of Rise Above come together, and it pays off in big ways. Longstreth’s singing is much stronger, less crutchily quirky and affected, while the band summons the textures and ideas of Getty without the jarring cut-up construction that album employed. The result is just a great rock album, as weird as that might seem, and you might be hard-pressed not to think of TV on the Radio at times—albeit without the stifling Dave Sitek production. Two songs right in the middle of the album (“Stillness Is the Move,” previously released as a single, and “Two Doves”) have female lead vocals, presumably supplied by band member Amber Coffman, and while not necessarily as strong as Longstreth’s vocals, they do provide the right character for the songs and serve as a nice break.

Weirdly, though, the best reference point for this album might actually be (deep breath)… The Beatles. Something about “Two Doves” recalls “Goodnight” more than, say, “Landslide,” and the fantastic opener “Cannibal Resource” has a crunchy guitar and blippy, irregular bass sound extremely reminiscent of Harrison/McCartney. And yeah, Longstreth’s melodies are that strong this time around, though maybe not on every song. There’s a certain way the folky inclinations combine with the rock and pop elements that really strongly evokes late-period Beatles albums. This album melds the great ideas Longstreth clearly comes up with in his sleep with a listenable sound and just plain old great songs.

THE BEST TRACK: “Two Doves” and “Cannibal Resource” are both great, as is “The Bride,” but I think the six-and-a-half minute long “Useful Chamber” is the clear centerpiece, and rightfully so: it moves effortlessly from electropop to acoustic folk to groove to straight-up rawk, then to a long female chorale break and back to the rawk. The song somehow manages to reference almost every major indie-rock act of the past few years, from TVOTR to Vampire Weekend to Animal Collective to the Arcade Fire to LCD Soundsystem. This wasn’t necessarily intentional, but it sure works out that way, and it’s the kind of breathtaking demonstration of mastery that indie fans actually like these days. Here’s hoping.