PixelVixen707

So a friend of a friend made us shlep to Park Slope last night. The cause? A private listening party to the Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca.  It drops in June, but the friend of a friend is a music blogger with a watermarked promo, which he just had to show off.  We just had to bring beer and vegan food, as well as our unfathomable excitement, which I was more than willing to offer two minutes into the record because oh, my, God. That little Yalie weirdo Dave Longstreth has just made my nervous system very, very happy.

I’ve been a casual listener to the Dirty Projectors, first giving them serious consideration after that Black Flag “covers” record they did, Rise Above, which of course really has nothing seriously to do with Black Flag. Rather than punk, Dirty Projectors are a melange of art pop and hard, cold stares. The Getty Address is an album to think about, to gaze at while it gazes back, but enjoy? Tough call.

But I enjoyed Bitte Orca a lot. If you’re jealous of me for hearing it, try this NPR stream from their SXSW gig. Imagine it with a better mix. Check out the melodies, the crisp and jittery guitars - but most of all, the high notes. This is a band that understands the appeal of a sudden high pitched sound. The girls - Dave has three in the band now - sing solos and harmonies but where they shine is when they just sing an open-mouthed blast of “AHHHHHHHHHH.” Sing it with us: “AHHHHHHHHHHH.” The first “ah” of “Fucked for Life” remains the band’s best moment but now we have a whole album of people scraping the high register, and every time they do, it’s like an electric shock.

The whole record is rich with these stabs of joy. Track three, “The Bride,” starts as a little acoustic thing, but Longstreth’s voice starts wriggling like a puppy and snaking higher until whoops, the band just exploded again. Track two is a sing-along: “TEEmecula sunRiiiiiiIIIIIIIIseeeeeee.” Oooookay! The exceptions prove the rule: “Stillness is the Move” is a cod-top-40 number that showcases Amber Coffman, but even here, the peaks are brighter than the valleys are sexy. And “Flourescent Half Dome” tries to find a tempo with an even keel - someone’ll probably compare this to Scritti Politti, ugh - and succeeds just in being confusing: this album calls for a gigantarama finish, because it’s primarily a gigantic experience, like the moment halfway through “Useful Chamber” - jeez these names, right? It’s like an instruction manual for a sex cave from the future - when the ‘lectric axe skidders in like a coked-up spider and then voila, cue the girls: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Genius!

We played the record straight through twice and played it again while people sulked around in the kitchen and talked about it. I recall smiling so many times through this disc, finding it witty and thrilling and catchy and delicious.

At the same time, I realize they’re still a brainy band, and when the high passes this won’t be an every-day kind of record for me. They lean on the nervous system rather than the circulatory. Bitte Orca is an exacting record, defined by little conceits and self-conscious thefts from r & b, and not particularly loose in the way of a soul record, although technically Longstreth’s vox share a soul singer’s versatility. I guess I’m saying Bitte Orca does not breathe. But it doesn’t need to. It breathes through its skin. It’s about the brain stabbing the heart, and the heart screams, “more.”

Recommended.