Three Imaginary Girls - The Dirty Projectors

Shrie's favorite albums of 2009, NOT in a "Top Ten" list

Imaginary Shrie — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:13:40 +0000

I have come to really dislike putting together "Best Of" lists or year-ending spreadsheets of music that everyone has already heard. This time I'm gonna do it differently...Shrie -style! These are just a few albums/songs/artists that tickled my fancy and got some good stereo-play at our house. Some are indie critic darlings (and disliked by many), some are sure-fire ins and some won't be at the top ofanyone's lists this year. It's a mish-mash of sonic goodness, extrapolated on by your friendly local music writer (and sometimes critic).

In alphabetical, not ranking, order. The "Top Ten" theme is too restrictive for my wily mind to grasp.

The Dirty Projectors stun Neumos with their intricate beauty

Imaginary Shrie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:54:37 +0000

4 Nov 2009

Angel Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle must be angels. There is no other way to describe their other-worldly harmonies. Their voices are Coco Rosie-esque at times, a moving and lilting choral pop display. Instead of traditional dueting harmonies, the three ladies voices are orchestrated into something resembling more of an instrument, and less three individual voices. David Longstreth made a very wise decision in adding them to the Dirty Projectors family. When I saw DP in '06 sometime at a super small club in Texas, it was just him and a guitar and a disturbingly enthralling video that was projected (heheh) onto a wall behind the stage. The performance bordered on the avant-garde, but I'm happy to say that seeing them in '09 was a completely different experience.

Little Wings, the project of Kyle Field, was the sole opening act for Dirty Projectors. Breezy and pastoral, akin to his seaside hometown of San Luis Obispo , Field's music as Little Wings is sprawling. Little Wings is basically a man and his guitar, crooning warm and breezy alt-country with a pinch of cheer. His songs took on more of a narrative style, often prophetic, reminiscent of old country standards. His performance was engaging and possibly poignant, but the loud crowd chatter that swelled during the middle of his set made it difficult to fully absorb what you were hearing.

Dirty Projectors finally came onstage to a sweating mass of people in the crowd, uncomfortably jammed up against each other. David Longstreth's voice is piercingly beautiful and surprisingly odd at the same time. After listening to their newest record, Bitte Orca , I was certain that the sounds I heard couldn't be produced live, assuming that the overall aesthetic was very much a product of in-studio knob twiddling. Live, however, they nailed it. The ladies let their voices fly to the very top of the ceiling, maxing out at an ungodly soprano range. Longstreth played his right-handed guitar left-handed, his hands both plucking wildly at the strings. His finesse on the guitar is unbelievable: lightning quick fingers racing along the strings, intricate rhythms perfectly played and an almost classical Spanish guitar technique.

It was obvious early on that this six-piece was a well-oiled machine. The punchy drumming collided with Longstreth's angular guitar playing and the trio of femme's ethereal vocals to form a purposefully disjointed and experimental, sound. Their rhythms are unpredictable and changed time signature multiple times during the length of any given song. From spare vocals over a simple bass line to a full-on onslaught of brash noise and off-kilter harmonies, they somehow sounded completely practiced, appropriate and complex. Every note was strong and confident, their eccentric sound giving them freedom to abandon traditional song structure.

They played an encore, of course (doesn't EVERY show get an encore these days?) to the packed crowd uproariously calling for more. And I can't blame them... I couldn't get enough of their weirdness, their strangeness, their intense interlocking rhythms that get stuck in my head. The Dirty Projectors are truly an experimental band, but judging from the crowd last night, they can also be dance-worthy, tear-soaked and absolutely stunning.

Wednesday's Recommended Show: Dirty Projectors at Neumos

Imaginary Shrie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:21:20 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Brooklyn experimental rockers Dirty Projectors for years now, before they caught hold in the indie music community with their most recent (and definitely most accessible) album, Bitte Orca. I first saw them at a tiny club in Texas, and I think they scared the bejeesus out of everyone with their weirdness, but I was absolutely enthralled.

Bitte Orca took their strange angular approach to lo-fi and mixed it up with SUPER catchy melodic hooks and a disjointed dance-feel, which really propelled them into the indie spotlight. Dirty Projectors' brand of wiry rock punctuated with puzzling shifts in song structure is complete addictive, gorgeous and promises to pack a good punch.

This is a don't-miss show at Neumos, this Wednesday, November 4th. Little Wings opens.

Deserved hyperbolic praise for The Dirty Projectors

Chelsea Werner — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:27:18 +0000

3 Jul 2009

dirtyprojectors09jul.jpg

OK, the holiday weekend is over and I’m finally sober enough to write about The Dirty Projectors show at Chop Suey on Friday night. I’m forcing myself to make this quick. Otherwise you’ll all end up getting annoyed with the veritable geyser of praise that my poor friends put up with as I talked about how their performance was close to a religious experience.

I’ve never found God or any version of any concept of God. But when Angel Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle were singing, it sounded like a choir. Seriously, I’ve been to Vienna and heard the boys choir there and, yeah, that was amazing, but you know what they lacked? Dave Longstreth’s mind-blowingly fast finger picking talking over and around the flighty sounds of the second guitar. Or maybe the Vienna boys choir could use some of the downright funky bass lines that Nat Baldwin laid down alongside the pristinely cymbolic (pun intended) drumming of Brian Mcomber.

Other than Longstreth’s slightly jilted cry of “Bitte Orca” that seemed to lag behind the rocked out “Useful Chambers” chorus, every single song they played was pitch perfect and an innovative variation of their recorded material. You could tell how happy this band was to be playing together and how good they knew they sounded. Their a’cappella strength was mighty and on this tour they seem all about harnessing a musical sound that people can hang onto as the band “Rise(s) Above” (yes, they did play it).

If you’ve tried to sing along with one of The Dirty Projectors’ songs, you know that the melodies and notes exist stratospheres above our heads. It felt like the band was doing us all a favor by bringing us something that we could dance and damage our vocal chords to. Before they spin off out of our orbit, leaving our only access to their sound as microwaves picked up from millions of years away by NASA, you should see The Dirty Projectors play live. And you should probably go soon; one the lovely ladies may have to return to her home planet where singing in glorious harmony is the only form of communication.

Rise Above

Bob Ham — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:45:31 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Above-Dirty-Projectors/dp/B000U3DF0O/wwwthreeimagi-20

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On paper, the concept behind this disc is a fairly intriguing one: pay tribute to one of punk’s most influential albums – in this case, Black Flag’s seminal full-length Damaged – by trying to recreate it using your memory as your only guide.

In practice, though, the Dirty Projectors’ version is a mystifying experiment, one that seeks to emasculate the grinding punk rock of the original with an arch, evasive pop sound that seems to shelter itself under a thick coat of gloss and artifice. The martial rhythms of the original “Gimme Gimme Gimme” are eschewed for a clattering beat over which a spiral of singers, both male and female, render the lyrics as a Danielson Famile-esque sing-along; “Six Pack” is turned into warbling ‘70s progressive rock (precisely the music that Messrs. Ginn, Dukowski, Stevenson, and Rollins were rebelling against in the first place).

Call it the Red House Painters effect. After hearing Mark Kozelek turn a dozen or more AC/DC songs into funereal folk pleas, far too many artists are taking it upon themselves to “pay honor” to their forebears by rendering their versions virtually unidentifiable from the originals. They are not cover songs; they are carpet bomb songs.

Call it the Red House Painters effect. Far too many artists are taking it upon themselves to “pay honor” to their forebears by rendering their versions virtually unidentifiable from the originals.