Seldom is a band able to venture into undiscovered countries or sound completely unique within the rock idiom anymore. Part of that has to do with the availability and user-friendliness of recording software; digital recording platforms have become so easy to use now that it's possible for any numbskull with a free weekend, a laptop and a creative urge to make his own magnum opus with little or no experience and about as much instrumental ability. Such ease afforded means that creative juices are able to flow freely but, because it's all running into the same kinds of processors, the playing field between “professional” musicians and “inspired amateurs” has really become leveled. So how does a band really hope to stand out or be heard over the din? What the Dirty Projectors have done is play the game by twenty-first century rules on Swing Lo Magellan – all of the electronic sounds they've been playing with since 2002 as well as the rock, folk and soul that has always been in them – but not bother to try and organize anything into a set of structures or an established paradigm. Instead, all the sounds that this group of five musicians (with the help of an additional six players) are capable of making is allowed to freely traverse and mix with everything else roaming around in this set of twelve songs and collide with each other unrestrained, with the only framework in place being a vague impression of pop songwriting. The results are something quite unlike any one other album ever released before (maybe if someone were to play Bug by Dinosaur Jr., Since I Left You by The Avalanches and David Bowie's Outside record at the same time, the results would be comparable to what you'll hear on Swing Lo Magellan), and proves to be something truly cool and different because it simultaneously goes well over the top in a multitude of directions at once; it is captivating for the fervor with which it changes perspectives on a track-by-track basis and deserves to be applauded for its ambition. There is truly nothing like it; and listeners who pick it up will find themselves glued to the experience of it from the moment it starts until the moment it ends.
Even with such rhetoric offered to build but the record's stature (or maybe because of it), listeners will still be taken off guard by the sparse introduction made by “Offspring Are Blank.” With hand claps and humming vocals to keep the beat and establish the melody and swishing sound effects added for color, singer David Longstreth will send chills down the spines of listeners as he appears like a soul-tinged desert mirage with the words “There was a single one/then there were ten/ Ten made a hundred, and a hundred million…”
“You came and spoke to me
I saw your face
Your words were like raindrops
From a storm in a vase.”
The words are unsettling and beautiful, and easy to relax into – even though listeners know they're clearly a prelude to something enormous, as suggested by their delivery. Listeners will be watching for that moment which is supposed to take their breath away, but it doesn't matter – when it comes, the torrential charge of guitars and real-time drums will take them clean off their feet, no matter what.
Jaws will have dropped somewhere during the play of “Offspring Are Blank,” but listeners will discover that there's little point in picking them up as the wildly bizarre, effects-laden drums of “About To Die” pick up as “Offspring” lets out. It's then when listeners will realize the enormous palette of effects used on the first track weren't just for “wow” factor; they're lynchpins for how this album functions. On “About To Die” (and elsewhere too), bizarre and almost incoherent conglomerations of sound rattle off each other to make a joyous and excited noise which listeners will find intoxicating. Listeners will find themselves following the curious combinations of sound as innocently as children at first, because they'll happily attest to having never heard anything like this strange, exotic creation before.
Those who stay will find themselves rewarded for their effort. After blowing minds with “Offspring Are Blank” and “About To Die,” Dirty Projectors streamline their approach for a captivating slab of trip hop soul in the form of “Gun Has No Trigger” (which simultaneously recalls Sneaker Pimps, Soul Coughing and Harry Connick Jr.) before cutting the sonic accoutrements to the bone for the title track and running to the south Saturn delta to re-imagine some of the artifacts that Hendrix left behind half-finished on “Maybe That Was It.” In each case, Dirty Projectors seem to rethink their sound and approach to it as the tape rolls (one of the furthest reaches can be found on “See What She's Seeing,” which sounds like it could have fallen on the cutting room floor after a recording session by Flaming Lips) never fail to hold their audience's attention each time.
By the end, as “Irresponsible Tune” re-examines a setting similar to John Lennon's lovier folk balladry before getting “crooked, fucked up and wrong” by not giving up one last explosion, listeners will find themselves confused, confounded unnerved by what they've just heard, but that's when they'll also realize that they've fallen in love with Swing Lo Magellan. Why? Words don't exactly do it justice, but one listen explains it; this is a unique and wonderful undiscovered country, but that's only the first reason.
Artist:
www.dirtyprojectors.net/
www.myspace.com/dirtyprojectors
www.facebook.com/dirtyprojectors
www.twitter.com/#!/DirtyProjectors
Download:
Dirty Projectors – "Gun Has No Trigger" – Swing Lo Magellan
Album:
Swing Lo Magellan will be released on July 10, 2012 by Domino Recording Company. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
