New Music: Dirty Projectors, "Rise Above" (9/11/07)

Band: Dirty Projectors
Album: Rise Above
Rel. Date: 9/11/07
Available on CD and LP from Dead Oceans

Rise Above, the new album from Omnivoracious Dave Longstreth and his band, Dirty Projectors, has a creative genesis that seemingly obscures the more important qualities of the record; however, just like with The Getty Address and its tale of a fictionalized Don Henley journeying through time to serenade Pocahontas (I kid, but honestly), it doesn't benefit the listener to approach Rise Above with conceptual artifice lingering in the back of their mind. Because while what it is (an imaginative reinterpretation of Black Flag's Damaged, meaning not covers, but something else) is arguably what it is, it is more importantly an album of original music written by Mr. Longstreth and executed with the help of a number of fine musicians.

"What I See" opens the album with the refrain "I wanna live, I wanna live, I was dead" sung over a huge groove, ably introducing their organic power, developed/evolved from continuous exploration as a live unit constrained to a traditional "rock band" format. The rhythm builds, the guitars squirm between the beats, and then it evaporates into amorphous cooing for a brief interlude before jumping right back into the main groove. The song has almost concluded before acceding to a verse proper and only after a second dispersal of the kinetic forces in favor of pastoral woodwinds, all atmosphere and no Earth. This structure of drastic dynamic shifts (on "Room 13", hearkening back to Robert Fripp's Zeus-thrown power chords ripping through the haze of Jamie Muir's miscellany at the start of Lark's Tongue in Aspic or, more recently, any song by ex-Tzadik avant-metal outfit Kayo Dot), plays a large role in the latest mode of Longstreth's songwriting and never does it feel out of place or used simply to attack the listener (but it can, and will, attack).

In the past, when I've tried to sneak the Dirty Projectors into the auditory diet of those around me, I found that people either asked me to "turn that weird shit off" or they've silently sat and waited until a conclusion, then asked me that I "never play that weird shit again". A real fuckin' dichotomy, you know? Now, with Rise Above released for public consumption, I find subjects can invariably tolerate the first half (a marked improvement), asking a polite question here or there concerning this or that (thoroughly enjoying "Thirsty and Miserable"), but as soon as "Police Story" comes on, they've had enough.

Appreciation for Longstreth's vocal iniquities has always been the ledge that one's ability to cope with his music rested upon. Some may find themselves conditioned to enjoy his overwrought melisma and Gothic harmonies since his last release, but when confronted with aggressive intervalic shifts and a harsh, brittle timbre, their will shall be tested. Which is perhaps its purpose, that if you can let yourself go and grok his run through the squalor, empathize with his expression even if you doubt his authenticity as a "fuck the police" rebel-type, you will be rewarded for your struggle with the best end-of-album sequence since Return to Cookie Mountain (although I still think "Wash the Day" is shit).

From the o-o-o-o-o-o choral arrangements of "Gimme Gimme Gimme" to the unacknowledged suite of "Spray Paint (The Walls)" and "Room 13", adorned with mourning string arrangements pulling every last bit of emotion from Longstreth's fragile upper register, as well as some of the finest bombast the band can muster, he would've already earned the dinosaur sticker for his notebook. Yet, in true dessert fashion, he saved the best for last, buttering me up for an A+, instructing me to "rise above" lest I become like the "jealous cowards" that just "try to control". Some may find it a trite conclusion, but those are the same fuckbags that can't stand happy endings.

Though it's undeniable that the idiosyncrasies which often define and shape his music still abound, Rise Above ultimately proves to be the album that best demonstrates Longstreth's (and his Dirty Projectors) unique songwriting talents (talents that can often come across as idiosyncracies), an irony when viewed from its conceptual heritage. Rise Above, overgrown with unchecked cross-pollination and tense, [near-]danceable polyrhythms, is an example of how you don't need to stick to a template to make good, honest, pop music. It just helps to focus your vision every once in a while.

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For this recording, Dirty Projectors are:

Dave Longstreth
Nat Baldwin
Brian McOmber
Amber Coffman
Susanna Waiche
Charlie Looker

Technicolor Memories: Le Samourai (1967)

Title Shot (60's Typography FTW)

Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) is, if nothing else, exquisite meditation.

Since time immemorial, a valve of my heart has been exclusively reserved to pump at full capacity only while watching film noir, a fact first acknowledged when my high school film studies professor thrust Double Indemnity deep into my eye sockets, followed by The Big Sleep, The Killers, and Orson Welles' mischievously manipulated Touch of Evil (the 1975 cut). (He was a good guy, that professor, rode a mean hog, wore leather jackets, jeans, and aviators—when he wanted you to watch something, you fuckin' watched it.) The genre cut into my flesh like it was a knife, cutting until I bled, and when I bled, that blood was cold ("Jill, this blood, this looks like cold blood...").

So what I'm saying is: I'm a reptile, the responsibility for which falls squarely at the feet of [Dr. Octagon] (or Capcom?); and that I enjoy noir is no surprise—it's embedded in my cold, cold blood.

The first time I watched Le Samourai, I was in complete disbelief. Where had this film been all my life? It had taken me 6 years since Double Indemnity to watch this? How could that be? Well, I suppose it's availability may have been marginal up until its resurrection as a member of the Criterion family, but the point is, including that as an excuse, it was still inexcusable that I had never even heard of it. Why hadn't this been thrust into my eye sockets? (Or the more apropos location of my belly?)

Not that I have a VHS Deck in my abdomen; I envision a dubious transaction on the streets of Chinatown where the local bootlegger hands it off to me in a forceful fashion as I walk past, dropping my cash at his feet.

Because my life is noir as fuck.

Noir as fuck

Le Samourai is transcendent, style sublimating into substance; the sharp existentialism of assassin du jour, Jef (played to perfection by Alain Delon), puts all other cinematic killers to shame. Outdoor shots are thick with rainy-Sunday atmospherics accompanied by a melancholic electric-organ theme that hypnotizes; interiors often labyrinthine (note the first scene inside the Police Department), confusing the senses with unexpected doorways, extras as subterfuge, and post-bop jazz. Actual acts of violence are few and far between; the story is about accepting the consequences for those actions that you willfully performed, few as they may be. And as you sit, entranced by the 24fps sequence of events that unfolds, you will come to understand as Jef understands: life is not something to be taken lightly, but it can be taken quickly.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The collaboration between Melville and Delon produced two of the greatest crime-dramas in history (Le Cercle Rouge being the other. They also worked together on Un Flic, but I've yet to see it. So maybe they went 3/3. I'd believe it.). Melville's direction is refined, so enthusiastically intellectual, philosophical even, that it seems at odds with a genre that some might instinctively consider hyper-masculine (see: Heat). But that's just some gender-bias bullshit. Of course it took a careful, nuanced director with vision to craft a film like this and not have it devolve into some shitty tale of revenge (which in some respects it may resemble). When Jef is betrayed by the woman he's betrayed his woman with, he knows what he has to do. But do we?

The Beautiful Caty Rosier

Melville uses his actors to meditate on what may or may not be an actual quote from Bushido code, but whether the quote is real or imagined is irrelevant—Le Samourai makes it real through a process of semiotic transmutation. And we, the viewer, meditate on whether or not we need to watch this damn movie again.

I vote yes.

Takin' down the set