OK, let's get this out of the way straight off: a band like Dirty Projectors should not be popular. Peculiar jutting time signatures, drum patterns that splat and fade in spastic bursts, elliptical, often slyly biting lyrics. How is that a recipe for success in an age that sees Mumford & Sons rise to the top of the indie heap? (no offense; I like M&S but there's nothing too adventurous about them, you have to admit) I suppose, if you're going to 'blame' anyone for this anomaly, it would have to be Radiohead. They burst the dam of pent-up, oddly angular experimental rock music over a decade ago, down which sluiced the likes of Animal Collective, Mum, cLOUDDEAD and countless others. Dirty Projectors, however, just might represent the apogee of this trend. I'll get to the details in a moment, but I truly cannot think of a band currently active and anywhere near this popular - the Crystal is at capacity tonight - that consistently skims the uppermost edges of what's possible in the realm of pop music. Yes, I suppose, Radiohead would be another but seeing them live these days is a very rare and very dear prospect indeed. Fortunately, we have Dirty Projectors. But first, tonight anyway, we have Wye Oak.
Wye Oak are from Baltimore and are named after the honorary state tree of Maryland, a gigantic white oak whose originating acorn is thought to have been germinated in 1540. Wye Oak the band, while appearing to be considerably younger, put out a sound that is just about as massive, and they do it right off, which is a bit of a shock considering there's only two of them, blond guitar siren Jenn Wasner and drummer (for now) Andy Stack. Wasner's red Fender is being run through some kind of ringing treatment and it's simply a bloody marvelous sound, full in equal measure of clarity and muscle. Oh, and reverb, did I mention reverb? Not a drenching, shoegazey reverb, but just enough to let her solos carry mystery into the already steaming air of the Crystal. The hit I get from Ms Wasner is an updated indie Lita Ford with a hint of Chrissie Hynde's stage presence and no, I'm not exaggerating.
Four songs in Stack switches to bass and rather than the percussive playing I'd expected from a drummer we instead get virtuosic fret gymnastics worthy of White Denim's Steve Terebecki. As the song evolves into a kind of lilty drone, anchored by an 808-ish dancey beat, he's at the keyboard, bass abandoned while she lets off some melodic sheets of tremolo-ed guitar. A lovely moment, proving that in Wye Oak's case at least, two is more than enough.
Though their sound does in fact, on occasion, soar toward the edge of the shoegaze stratosphere, there's something too delicate about their melodies for it to ever get lost in there. So let's dub them neo-shoegaze pop, how about? The drums, by the way, are profound, a huge sound, think cannons. And in case I haven't gotten it across, the girl can play herself some guitar. Believe. Even the song mid-set that was marred by a steady current of feedback was surmounted by Wasner's authority over each of her six strings. Wye Oak's one of those duo bands whose sound is so giant you keep looking for the other band members at first but once you've convinced yourself there aren't any, you settle in to a kind of subtle amazement and let the songs spread over you like, yes, a legendary oak (you knew I was going to have to work that metaphor in there somehow).
This was my first time seeing Dirty Projectors and approaching the show I must confess to some apprehension. Swing Lo Magellan, the record they're touring at the moment, is, to a degree greater than even their previous, breakthrough album Bitte Orca, nothing if not a series of very complex set pieces, bendy and surprising and scrupulously arranged. In other words, songs that might struggle to come across in a live setting. To say that such thinking was misplaced is the greatest understatement of the year so far.
After opening with Swing Lo's title track the band venture into "Offspring Are Blank," the first track on that same album. It's as complex (that word again, it might show up a lot in this post) a piece of art-rock trickery on record as we've heard in some time and lo (ha!) and behold, it's exactly as impressive live, from the almost slave-spiritual background vocals it begins with that carry through the verse segments of the song (when not interrupted by a ferocious rocking explosion of a chorus) to the proto-typical Projectors chopped rhythmic structure. Just plain masterful and it shows very early in their set just how much at the peak of their powers they are.
This is, of course, David Longstreth's band, and it's run as more or less a benevolent dictatorship. The others - bassist Nat Baldwin, second guitarist Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle on keys and drummer Brian McComber - contribute ideas and make suggestions but the vision is Longstreth's alone and in its singularity I'm reminded of Captain Beefheart. Whereas the Captain trafficked in distorted, contorted blues motifs, Longstreth opts more for latent prog-pop strains flavored by messed-with Afrobeat guitar figures and rhythms and the aforementioned gospel-y touches, most often evident in crazed precise handclap patterns.
As for Longstreth's presence, it's unmistakably charismatic. Maybe it's just the almost-shoulder-length hair flying down around his face and the southpawness of his playing (he plays a right-handed guitar left-handed and upside down) but he can't help but remind of another leftie guitarist - this one from the Northwest - some 20 years ago: hugely talented, popular beyond expectation and a bit off-puttingly touchy at times in interviews. But he's got it, that it that defines pop greatness and from all indications he has the drive to keep making music this surpassingly great.
And oh dear, was it great. All but five of the sixteen songs in their set come from Swing Lo Magellan, with a smattering of Bitte Orca and Mount Wittenberg Orca, their collaboration with Bjork. "Socialites," off the new record, is one of those with the Afro-beat tinge to it, Longstreth's palm wine guitar bringing a North African Mediterranean breeze to Portland. That song and the next ("Beautiful Mother" off the Bjork record) are so beautifully, precisely executed that it has me scratching down in my notebook "a wonderfully challenging band, the dual female vox on "..Mother" are truly a thing of wonder, almost yelping but harmonic as hell. Hard to describe how effective they are, otherworldly yet grounded." And the hits to the wonder reflex just kept on coming.
"Gun Has No Trigger" is a skewed avant-pop soul masterpiece. Bitte Orca's "Useful Chamber" is one of their most complex songs (by now you know that that's saying something, yeah?), crazy with changes and tempo mash-ups but it comes off perfectly, perfectly, ending with a mad dash into a frenetic chaos that makes total sense. Astounding, and in the end, just plain joyous. Throughout the night, Longstreth's guitar playing is somehow both rather feral and exceedingly precise, J. Mascis if he were Pat Metheny. And special credit has to go to McComber, whipping out these bizarre rhythmic tropes with the confidence of a young Bill Bruford. And though perhaps a tad overused, the percussive handclapping is as unerring as I've ever seen it, and amazingly, in another sign of how beloved and innately understood this band is by their fans, the audience quite often joins in, not missing a fractured beat.
As the show progresses, the screen-projected, made-up heiroglyphics behind them increase in (here it is again) complexity, becoming a dizzying wall of indecipherable but intriguing script, and you can't help but believe that such was the intention, to reinforce the extent to which Dirty Projectors are able to create a joyous, intense, irresistible and compelling density that leaves the mouth agape, the brain spinning and the heart in love. As we were leaving, I said to my friend Chris how much my prog-pop friends on facebook are missing out. Dirty Projectors are a gateway back into modern music for anyone who feels that a certain intelligent adventurousness has been missing since the heyday of King Crimson or Kraan or fill-in-the-blank. Meanwhile, for those (overwhelmingly much younger) fans selling out venue after venue on this tour, well, they'll get to say, in twenty, thirty years time, "Yeah, I got to see Dirty Projectors live and they were AMAZING!"
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