Rise Above - Dirty Projectors Album Review
Dirty Projectors
Album Review
New York musical maverick Dave Longstreth aka Dirty Projectors left Yale University to pursue a music career. I say music with strong reservations. Longstreth isn't your average songwriter, so you may not have heard of his name or his music. There's nothing here to hit daytime radio playlists either. Nevertheless, he is an accomplished, if oddball, musician with a, strange, vision. Drawing on all his powers of recall, Rise Above is a sort of tribute to his teenage faves, Black Flag, as re-imagined from memory. The reason for this is. Whilst helping his parents move house he found an empty tape case of Damaged (1981). So in troubadour spirit he, well, remembered it all, we think. He could have bought the original, but that would have been, dare I say it, too easy, and would have been (gasp) a covers album... a big no- no. Not having heard Damaged, it's impossible to compare and contrast the net results. For starters,vocally, he's in the same league as Antony Hegarty (Antony And The Johnsons) but the music (muzak?) is of a totally different variety. Somehow, I wouldn't imagine him sounding like a bunch of Punks either.
On face value therefore, Rise Above has some very odd, and I mean odd, moments, but mostly disasters. What I See is uhm, interesting, in a vocal sense, a bit bonkers, but ok. Then for No More, he beefs things up with a pulsating rhythm and string section before it goes, ah yes, bonkers. By now we've gathered this is, different, very different. Jangly guitars introduce Depression with plenty of OTT backups and crashing....noise, followed by an equally eccentric rocker Six Pack with the girlie backups going ballistic. A heavenly opening for Thirsty And Miserable leads to rambling, extraordinary, quirky variations with little real direction. Police Story sucks - tuneless and painful wailings backed by gentle acoustic strumming. Shock horror.Room 13 shows promise. Sweet backups and the tenderest of strums, until it's spoilt, nay, destroyed by more, ( not again please ), weirdness. To top it all off, (I don't believe it ) there's an untitled (and miserable) hidden instrumental track.
Strewth!
