Thursday, July 30, 2009

7/19 Dirty Projectors @ East River State Park

(Since this review is coming in a little late, and my memory of the performance might be a little hazy, you should also check out the review by Nate Chinin in the NY Times.)


Fortunately, I was somehow able to jump the long line of neon and jorts clad hipsters forming along Kent Ave. in Williamsburg on July 19th and sneak into East River State Park for the Projectors show, after a brief frisking and conversation with the event employees about the dangers of water confiscation at a concrete venue in 80ยบ heat. Finally, I joined the flow of people walking down towards the river and pushed in towards the stage as the sun began to lower behind Manhattan in the distance. The crowd sowly hushed as Longstreth and Deradoorian came out and picked through a nice acoustic version of Two Doves. Through I'm probably not as familiar with their catalogue as many of the people reading this post, I have been listening to their new album Bitte Orca pretty much non-stop for the past month or so and was very impressed by their ability to replicate such a complicated studio sound in a live setting. Especially with the pretty sketchy levels. The bass, which for the most part was being handled saucily in the expert hands of Nat Baldwin, at times sounded like a cat being dragged over sandpaper and kind of pissed me off...I mean, these guys are only beginning to gain popularity, but they should be beyond having blatant sound issues at their concerts. (My apologies for this rant if it was an unknown problem such as a blown speaker, that sucks...but STILL.) Other than the sound issues, however, the show seemed to come off without a hitch. The remodeled shipping dock on the East River was a perfect setting for the gritty apocalyptic lyricist Longstreth, whose screeching yelps in Police Story convey an anger and echoes of the imminent rebellion of his Black Flag influences, denied by the defeated lyrics which claim "Understand / We're fighting a war we can't win." Lots of new stuff from Bitte Orca was played, and a rousing cheer came from an otherwise unduly sullen crowd (perhaps dehydrated after having their water nabbed) when Amber and Angel synced up for their now almost trademark arpeggiation on a very uptempo version of Gimme Gimme Gimme. Also very well received was Stillness Is The Move, Amber's spotlight piece and the subject of their new music video. Though I loved the song, and thought the version done on the 19th was near perfect to their album, the cantankerous critic in me had to notice that at times Amber's voice live seemed forced and a little piercing on the upper ranges. Reading that back, I sound like such a douchebag, but hey, it was still incredible that she was even singing at those dog whistle decibels, and the studio version she nails it. All in all it was a flawless live performance by the whole band, highlighting the groups seemingly androidal ability to execute hopelessly complicated Soukous style guitar riff while simultaneously being able to break down into dirty post punk jams. I'm looking forward to seeing these guys really take off.

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