Album Review Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors

Pitting the twinkling of a lounge piano against squelching burps of bass, bumble bee violins, and erm, a mangled sitar solo (and this is just within the space of one song) to call ‘Dirty Projectors’ merely saturated is an abyss-sized understatement.

Streets apart from the lush orchestration and globe-trotting ambition of 2012’s ‘Swing Lo Magellan,’ the follow-up swaps in natural brushstrokes for jagged, jarring slashes of opposing colours, and harsh colliding textures. Somehow, though, Dave Longstreth conjures up something resembling a clear picture from all the record’s wildly disparate elements, and ‘Dirty Projectors’ serves to unify his most experimental moments with the door-opening impact of ‘Bitte Orca’.

Despite its constant aural shape-shifting, ‘Dirty Projectors” centre of gravity is clear. Tumbling out of a break-up, it’s a mechanical glitching puzzle of a record, and listening to it often feels vaguely disorienting; like navigating a new place without the help of Citymapper. Making tentative steps towards healing, and slinging pain straight onto every verse, it’s refreshing to hear Longstreth writing without a distant concept to hide behind.