Dirty Projectors

The Dirty Projectors' album Bitte Orca has been one of my favorites so far this year and has spent considerable time in my rotation. Their music is unconventional, but in a very satisfying way. It's challenging, but not challenging like med school and residency, where you're exhausted, frustrated and confused when it's over. It's more of a challenge like finishing the NYT crossword; you put some work into it and at times it may seem like you're not getting anywhere, but if you stay with it and see it through, it all comes together so perfectly in the end. Their vocal efforts are comprised by Dave Longstreth, the lead singer, and three female singers Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle. They make great use of flowing harmonies, but also create dissonant sounds at times, part of the challenge, but also part of the reward. In a similar way, they'll take a straight-forward song structure and bust it apart with an abrupt change in the time signature. Anyway, they came to town last night and I got a chance to see them at the Aladdin Theater. Their show did not disappoint. Before seeing them, I really liked about half the songs or so on the latest album and anticipated hearing those. What I didn't anticipate was that the songs I'd previously just overlooked took on a whole new life seeing them live. It's like the gaps in the record were completely filled in. For me, Bitte Orca is now a 9 track masterpiece. Useful Chamber was one song that really paid off last night. The way it builds to the chorus and then lays back on those slightly dissonant voices before building again to finish it out took me by surprise. The other song that surprised me was Remade Horizon. The ladies have a vocal solo later in the song where they employ a technique called "hocketing" which was used in 13th and 14th century vocal music and is basically the sharing of a melody by multiple people. It's amazing. I've posted a link to a video of Dave and the ladies demonstrating it. It drags on, so you might want to skip toward the end. At any rate, seeing and hearing them perform it live is incredible. I think it would even impress the likes of Mike Patton and Reggie Watts. If you do watch the video, Dave also plays a sample of them hocketing with a guitar melody, which is also awesome.