“Stillness is the Move”
from the album Bitte Orca
2009
iTunes
Dirty Projectors‘ David Longstreth has always had an air of pretension befitting a Yale musical-composition major; he uses his scratchy, soukous-style guitar playing and nervous warble (pitched somewhere between Arthur Russell vulnerability and David Byrne paranoia) in service of high concepts like The Getty Address‘ bizarre, Don Henley-starring folktale and Rise Above‘s Black Flag “re-imagining.” But Bitte Orca suggests that school is finally out for summer: “Look around at everyone / Everyone looks alive and waiting,” Longstreth sings over the loping, sun-dappled groove of the opener, “Cannibal Resource,” as close to a throw-your-hands-in-the-air moment as the band has ever produced — until “Stillness is the Move,“ of course. With its nodding R&B beat and Amber Coffman’s melismatic vocals, that breakout waiting to happen is but one “all the single ladies” shout-out away from being a Hot 97 jam. Over nine indispensable tracks, Bitte Orca forges a more perfect union between eccentricity and accessibility: The pop crescendos of “Temecula Sunrise” filter through what feels like ten different time signatures; the warped electro pulse of “Useful Chamber” dissolves into finger-picked introspection before exploding in noise-rock abandon; restless guitar skitters, and esoteric Nico references add anxiety to the heart-stilling balladry of “No Intention” and “Two Doves,” respectively. Much ink will likely be spilled on 2009 being the year that Brooklyn’s experimental class finally went “pop,” and — with apologies to Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear — it’d be hard to find a better thesis statement.