Dirty Projectors
Dirty Projectors
(Domino)
LP CD DigD
Dirty Projectors eighth album, eponymously named, seems to have spawned another round of what is indie rock now navel gazing and it's pretty clear that for Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth that indie rock in 2017 in unencumbered by the parish council’s parochial constraints, not that he doesn’t respect their blah blah blah-de-blah. And what that makes for is a breathtaking, and breathtakingly ambitious collection of songs, sweet, cross, crossfaded, disappointed, exhilarated, hopeful…
Cool Your Heart with Dawn Richard
And while there is so much brilliance in the grooves, in the binary digits, however you listen… Still gotta start with the very special penultimate song on the record, if you still listen that way, Cool Your Heart, featuring an amazing particularly heart melting vocal from the lesser indie, DAWN. It’s a perfect pop strange understated slight, minimal organ parted bedfellow, sister, of Beyonce’s brilliantly beautiful paean to fucked up love Hold Up. And some credit is due to sister co worker on this song, Solange. Beyonce’s sister that is. Unfortunately not my sister, else I probably wouldn’t be sitting here babbling. Sisters can do that. Cool Your Heart has a great video and I love how it’s a study in whats up with men’s fashion… vs women I think. Dave’s dressed like a Tim Cook surrogate, although I suppose he’s relatively stylish as men go. Hair, lots of, beard, plentiful, dark dark and no salt and pepper neither… And then there's DAWN. Now That's What I Call Hair and That's What I Call a Show Stealing Coat. And then there’s the honking horns and then there’s so many musical fences straddled not to borrow and not to steal but just to belong... I could go on about this forever but instead you could just go listen and watch, above…
And then just when that’s over comes the monumental I See You - a song so owned by the organ, as much as when you first heard that venerated instrument at the fingertips of Jackie Mittoo, or kick in, on Like A Rolling Stone or caressed expertly by Timmy Thomas’ on Why Can’t We Live Together - one of the few songs you could masturbate to thinking about yourself and it would be more than okay. I See You strides right along with those big girls. “Forgiveness, reconciliation…” “The love we made is the art…” Oh OH oooh. It’s like my eye have been opened.
Early on, during Keep Your Name
“What I want from Art is truth
What you want is fame…”
And getting Naomi Klein and Gene Simmons into the same verse…
And the opening horn passage, finger clicking start of Up in Hudson. Oh…
This is up all up there with the euphoric music of Anderson .Paak and then at soulful turns, like Green Garside in his heyday was sprinkling a little magic over the music too.
Sometimes on early listens to records as epicly great as this, I have to take them off the turntable and catch my breath. I can’t even think of looking for sad stories about the man Donald Trump being out of his depth anymore. Dirty Projectors Dirty Projectors is just everything I'm gonna need for a while.
