Album Reviews

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

With stutter-stepping jazzy vocal and guitar cadences over moments of face-searing rockouts, Dirty Projectors’s latest full-length effort, Bitte Orca, ticks like a broken clock. “Useful Chamber” epitomizes the mad genius of bandleader, guitarist, and vocalist Dave Longstreth, as the song meanders from psychedelic hip-hop to avant-stoner rock. Captain Beefheart be damned, Longstreth keeps the experimental interesting while keeping the toes tapping. Where Longstreth takes you in a song is unpredictable— through forests of strings and valleys of distorted bass guitar, or, what is that? It might just be the sound of schoolgirls in a feather fight, or maybe it’s Angel Deradoorian, who drops the bass to blast out the groovy jam “Stillness Is the Move.” Singing over layered backing vocals, Deradoorian is the Mariah Carey of the indie world; her voice could break glass or melt butter. She, like Longstreth, practices melisma, the act of extending a sung syllable over several notes. This technique doesn’t often find its way into rock—it usually finds a home in Middle Eastern pop songs, African- American gospel, and opera—yet it earnestly defines the quartet as truly unique in the indie-rock scene. For some it may be too much, but for a new take on what prescribes indie-ness, innovation, risk-taking, and accessibility, Dirty Projectors definitely cover all the bases.

By Drew Tewksbury

from Musica Universalis column in Flaunt Magazine, Issue 103 May 2009

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© 2009 Drew Tewksbury: Multimedia Journalist.