Dave Longstreth, the lead singer of the The Dirty Projectors is really smart. Like smarter than me smart. Like smarter than you smart. Like smarter than a 5th grader smart. He went to Yale, dropped out, moved to Brooklyn, formed a band and proceeded to acquire himself a wardrobe that would fit right at home in a Positive K video and/or an Andrew Lloyd Webber productions that may or may not include a so-called “dreamcoat.”

He is also probably a genius of some sort. Mike Powell sums it up pretty perfectly in the first line of his Pitchfork review when he declares that “like a lot of visionaries, [he] is so full of bright ideas he can barely keep his shit together. Part of the problem is that he’s indiscriminate about what he eats: Gustav Mahler, reggaetón, Malian guitar music, Cole Porter, band members.”

On-stage, Longstreth doesn’t move much and he barely talks. Insteads, he seems permanently trapped inside a mathematical mind, rocking an over-sized black hoodie that swallows the entirety of his face, like a fully-grown hipster Kenny from South Park, one who’s really into urban dystopias and afro-pop. His music is like music critic catnip: difficult, oft-scattershot and often wildly original. It’s not the kind of music that you’d ever expect to hear from a car stereo unless an total apocalypse occurred and mysteriously spared everyone but the staffs of Internet music magazines.

For Their Next Album, The Dirty Projectors Will Re-Imagine Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Entirely From Memory

I suppose on paper, I probably shouldn’t like the Dirty Projectors. They’re purposely weird. They make music devoid of any sort of catchiness. And in-person they can come off aloof, more interested in exploring sonic possibilities than entertaining an audience. Yet taken as a whole they’re one of the most-interesting and promising bands working today. A prodiguously talented group, with a highly intelligent front-man, whose only liability is that at times he can get too smart for his own good, suffering from a million clever ideas flooding his head at all times, unsure exactly how to perfectly parse the good from the bad.

Squiggly afro-pop guitar lines, powerful quasi-math rock drums and gorgeous three-part harmonies buoyed by Longstreth’s strong Jim James-if-he-were- singing-underwater voice are following by spastic un-focused noise jams. But more often than not it works and even when it doesn’t, the Projectors’ talent is always salient, both live and on Rise Above, their recent sorta’ but not really cover album of the Black Flag record with the same title , that Longstreth claims he re-imagined entirely from memory after not having listened to it since middle school.

Like many bands with experimental leanings, the Dirty Projectors are certainly an acquired taste and I sense that they’re probably going to get a whole lot better if Longstreth can harness his creativity and focus long enough to create something a bit more seamless and cohesive. While I’m not yet sold on the band’s greatness, I don’t think they’re very far off either. Plus, I can’t wait to hear Longstreth’s next project, a re-imagining of The College Dropout. I’m relatively certain that The DP’s will do a killer version of “The New Workout Plan.”

Download:
MP3: The Dirty Projectors-”No More”

Bonus:
MP3: Kanye West-”The New Workout Plan”

Stumble It!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 1:22 am and is filed under Beards, Blazers, & Glasses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.