Dirty Projectors, London Scala

Dirty Projectors

September 14, 2009

I’ve seen a lot of live music these past few weeks, and that forms a strange contrast with just how excited I am about seeing Dirty Projectors live for the first time. I’ve not watched clips so have no idea how it’ll carry, but on the other hand I’m worried that even if Dirty Projectors are phenomenal, I won’t notice. Odd, I know, but a positive reflection of just how much invention there is in 2009’s over-populated live music arena. I wonder whether they’ll muddle into the superfluity, or be incredible enough to gobble their own pedestal. But what if they annoy the concentration span out of me? Will that be a reflection of my gig exhaustion, or will it be entirely because of how I react on the night?

Luckily, the show is opened by the finest support act this writer’s seen all year, tUnE-YarDs. She sets the benchmark for Dirty Projectors with an eye-popping set of what I can only recall as ’40s dancehall though the eyes of a Ritalin-prescribed toddler. In spite of this seeming pretension, the mix is far from Marmite; it’s far too varied for that. tUnE-YarDs is a one-woman ukulele machine with yodelling, animalistic vocal phrases and frankly barbarous noises thrown in, looped and interchanged with one another into a starkly raw sound.

Floaty, dizzy ukulele weighty vocals on the one side against breezy, trebly ukulele on the other fuse into a charming and most unusual mix. ‘Hatari’ is the highlight, a slice of valiantly raw scratchiness which proves entirely captivating. tUnE-yArDs’ beats and components are muddled and muddied and jumbled and her set is accordingly met with cheers and claps for an encore. She’s a revelation.

With the bar now set impossibly high for Dirty Projectors, Dave Longstreth and Angel Deradoorian open Dirty Projectors’ set with ‘Two Doves’. It’s a clever move which instigates maximum attention, but falls short; it should be masterful but instead feels oomphless.

I fell for Bitte Orca shortly after I played it for the first time, finding its intricacies far more homely than Rise Above or going back further, the now-incoherent ‘Fucked For Life’. Instead of ‘weird for the sake of it’, the songs developed an odd coherence; the sugary female vocals felt more essential, and the noodling had been made more concise. Each sound felt essential.

The ordering of the LP felt masterful too, logical ups and downs a more natural fit to Dave Longstreth‘s overactive mind. Gone are the songs requiring a 30-second fast-forward, replaced by a new found sensuality and danceability. ‘Temecula Sunrise’ and ‘Stillness Is The Move’ aren’t exactly highlights in such an awe-inspiring album, but they’re certainly the most immediate. And the vocal work throughout Bitte Orca is a veritable crib sheet on how to use a talent.

While Dirty Projectors’ epic variation works on record, it’s a step too jaw-dropping tonight. It often feels like a competition between the music’s constituent parts, with Longstreth frantically picking at his guitar, Brian Mcomber manically thrashing at his drum kit and Deradoorian’s coloratura soprano all vying for centre-stage. In itself, this is no surprise, its more the execution of it that forms the problem. In the process of trying to ‘win’, Longstreth inevitably falls into the trap of embellishing his role, meaning the others have to naturally follow. It’s easy to lose attention from this far away.

There’s an incredible elasticity in this fight-off, which on the “yeah I wanna” refrain of ‘Remade Horizon’ feels touchable but on ‘Useful Chamber’, feels like a fidgety, overly parodial reimagining of chamber music. It’s not all lost though; songs that threaten to go off the rails are frequently restored by Coffman, Deradoorian and Dekle locking into a chord or honing in on their version of a fugue.

Instead of being a wildly over-the-top celebration of musical invention, Dirty Projectors’ set is patchy. Where it works it’s phenomenal, an unnerving display of sounds being thrown at songs, but where it doesn’t, it feels lacking and close-to-annoying.

The harmonies are blinding, and combined with Longstreth’s tortured solo prove the focal point of the set, the expulsion of his grandiose ambition which actually carries through. But Dirty Projectors’ overly elusive lyrics are unfortunately met by a live show reigning in closer to wilfully obscure than seductively brittle.

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