Dirty Projectors at First Avenue, 7/15/12
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| Photo by Tony Nelson |
First Avenue, Minneapolis
Sunday, July 15, 2012
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Dirty Projectors at First Avenue, 7/15/12
You can sit all day and try to explain (or have explained to you) the complicated, genre-mashing, almost brittle nature of Dirty Projectors' work, but the easiest manner in which to understand it is to simply see it in a live setting. The live show lets another one of life's "a-ha" moments bubble to the surface and no further explanation is needed. However, this is a recap and, by design, some explanation is required.
Sunday night at First Avenue, Dirty Projectors took the stage -- which was dressed exactly as it was for their Bitte Orca tour in 2009 and, indeed, still included some of that album's design elements in the background projections -- and got going with "Dance for You," one of the standout tracks from their new Swing Lo Magellan, which finds the Projectors at long last finally settling into a groove of sorts, though by nature, the complex, massive scope of their songs is sure to give way to something different next time out.
They started to hit essentially a long-distance runner's pace as "Cannibal Resource" began, which best showcased their abilities in every category: Lead singer Dave Longstreth's wobbly, beautiful voice, the seamless genre-bending (which most often includes elements of Talking Head-like punk, Stephin Merritt-esque cinema, and Brian Eno-ish experimentation) and the outright stunning backing vocals of Amber Coffman and Olga Bell. "Cannibal Resource" is one of those songs it seems impossible to hate. It's uplifting, fairly catchy, very inventive and just plain enjoyable to listen to; the version the Projectors turned in Sunday was no different.
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| Photo by Tony Nelson |
As the new single, "Gun Has No Trigger" made it's appearance (Longstreth dedicated it and the following song, "See What She's Seeing" to the Twins) as the set started to wind down, it carved into stone just how unique this band really is. "Gun" sounds like virtually nothing else the band has produced and sticks out as both a single and a sore thumb on Swing Lo Magellan.
Yet, it could not have been created by any other band, it sounds exactly like a Dirty Projectors song -- even though it doesn't. There is an intangible quality to their music that makes it exponentially more enjoyable. Other bands wander into baroque territory and get lost in the muck, but with Dirty Projectors if a song was straight-ahead it would be equally as confusing. The baroque qualities seem to be the band's lifeblood.
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| Photo by Tony Nelson |
The encore to the roughly hour-long set was just as strong as the rest of the show had been, they almost sounded like they were still warming up in a way. They kept it short and sweet, however, ending with a grand version of "Stillness is the Move" that put a nice exclamation point on what had been pitch-perfect, awe-inducingly arranged hour of some of the weirdest yet oddly catchy music ever created on this planet. The buzz that it left in it's wake wasn't tinnitus, for once.
Critic's Bias: I wasn't really sure what to expect from Dirty Projectors as people I trusted had said both good and bad things about their live show (this had been my first time seeing them), but I was pretty blown away by the whole thing by the end.
The Crowd: A typical Sunday crowd at First Avenue (read: low-key and quiet), that was made a little more lively by a good chunk of people that had been at the Bastille Day Block Party and had clearly been imbibing beforehand.
Random Tidbit: Everyone in my vicinity commented on the sheer awesomeness of the women's voices at some point, Amber Coffman's in particular. They were not wrong.
Random Notebook Dump: This for all intents and purposes should not work, but it's seamless in it's execution--how is this possible?
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Slideshow: Dirty Projectors at First Avenue, 7/15/12
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