Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

I first heard the Dirty Projectors on their tour opening for TV on the Radio. It was months before the release of Bitte Orca and as an introduction to the band this was the ideal. The record is astounding, but to see how the group creates these complex and dense textures of vocal harmonies, shifting sporadically into eccentric time signatures that wistfully pick you up in their joyous buoyancy while David Longstreth cranes his neck forward—it was singular.

But, I didn’t find out until recently that Bitte Orca wasn’t instantly accessible to everyone else. I don’t think this’ll be the case with their seventh record, Swing Lo Magellan, which you can thankfully stream below. Bitte Orca was pushing a digital production of positivity with maximalist compositions—Swing Lo Magellan swings in the other direction with sparser organic production and songs. Just like Bitte Orca was a reaction (and excursion) to digital processing in modern music, Swing Lo Magellan is a reaction to the falsity of today’s images—peeling back the layers to reveal a human element, whether it’s in the chatter, coughs, buzzing scattered in the songs. And within the confines of pop structures, fully realized melodies you realize these are people writing these songs, playing these instruments, singing for you. Within the limitations comes another innovation.

Swing Lo Magellan is out July 10 via Domino.

-via The Guardian