pbone's Indie Alphabet: 'D' is for Dirty Projectors

[pbone]

So I wanted to venture into the dumb hipster side of indie for just a second. This leads us to Dirty Projectors, possibly the most commonly referenced, non-techno band when wanting to talk shit on hipsters. DP only really finds a foothold in this section of the indie community, and almost nowhere else. Their sound is angular and heavily melodic, not really smoothed-over pop or anything like that. They have an entire company's worth of past and present members, but the band is inexorably led by Dave Longsreth, who plays a 12-string guitar left-handed and upside down. On top of Longsreth's own vocals, there's a couple of girls who do some singing too, but (little known fact), on their latest record, Bitte Orca, DP just recorded an hour's worth of finches squawking in a cage and called it a day. I don't know if I would recommend seeing them live, you're going to see a bunch of weird dicks dancing all wack-style and jittering around.

This is why you will hate this band:

I haven't delved into their earlier albums too much, but Bitte Orca (Domino) is a pretty baller record.

Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
Dirty Projectors - Temecula Sunrise



Runners Up!:

Devendra Banhart - Yes, he slept with Natalie Portman. Who hasn't. You or I, that's who. Another freak folk guy, but most definitely the most famous out of all of them. Regardless, he accidentally does slip out a good song once in a while.
Devendra Banhart: "Seahorse"


Dr. Dog - Psych-rockers from the East Coast. Shaky vocals and actually have a good 60's style to them. Pretty common on the festival circuit. "The Ark" (below) has a head-sway-worthy guitar solo after 2 minutes.
Dr. Dog - The Ark


Deastro - Moondagger is the sleeper album of the year. It's about a fucking space knight in some futuristic feudal civilization. Crazy production, high energy everything, a lot of 8-bit synths and glockenspiels.
Deastro - Parallelogram

 

[Czech]

Do you like the Dodos? Got a couple of songs from them and I rather liked what I heard. "Ashley" was nice.

 

[snuffbox]

Doomtree.

 

[Sesquipedaliantique]

Do you like the Dodos? Got a couple of songs from them and I rather liked what I heard. "Ashley" was nice.

Seeing them live soon.

 

[FLAM]

Dodos are good. Saw them last year. Visiter is a pleasant album.

I'm a big fan of The Dirty Projectors. Saw them, well, it was just Dave under the name back in 05, opening for CocoRosie. It was awful, but I had a feeling his recorded music would be cool, so I checked out The Getty Address. I liked it but it's not the easiest listen. I saw him again (with the full band, this time) last month at a free outdoor show in Brooklyn. They were really really good. Bitte Orca is probably their most accessible album, as well as their best.

They played Letterman last week. It wasn't that great of a performance though.

 

[Edwin]

Couple of great songs on Bitte Orca. The album of Black Flag songs is cute, too. They were really weird live, opening for TVOTR. The girls kind of diva-it-up like Mariah Carey on their big moments, which just seems strange.

 

[Byron The Bulb]

"Stillness is the Move" is one of my five favorite songs of the year, but I haven't actually checked out the album. I think I saw that those girls don't actually sing on every song? That's stupid, if true, because Dave Longstreth's vocals are really irritating whereas those girls pretty much own.

 

[pbone]

They sing on pretty much all of them.