Proving that summertime jams don’t need to sound like they were
regurgitated from ELO’s back catalogue, Dirty Projectors’ Bitte
Orca is definitely a breezy pop album, but a smart one. Trace this
band’s lineage back to cerebral art-rock musicians like Talking Heads,
where playful experimentation doesn’t overwhelm accessibility or become
too painfully precious. There’s a little Laurie Anderson in here too,
especially in the vocal plays of band mastermind Dave Longstreth, who
takes a step back and lets the voices of guitarist Amber Coffman and
bassist Angela Deradoorian weave in and out, with fractured but pretty
yelps. As Joel Plaskett recently taught us, three really is the magic
number when it comes to vocal arrangements.
Longstreth isn’t afraid to play with genres and a sound gelled with
West African highlife, especially on the Afro-pop pleaser “Temecula
Sunrise.” (Although the same appropriation arguments against Vampire
Weekend can be applied here.) Clean beats and American R&B control
“Stillness Is The Move,” before they’re exchanged with gorgeous strings
on “Two Doves.” We’re lucky to still have Dirty Projectors—the
Brooklyn band had to cancel its Canadian dates after a
horrific-sounding van accident last week, but all the band members are
OK and will be around well after Bitte Orca is named to the
year-end critics’ lists.
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.