Dirty Projectors Got Bach

Dirty Projectors
Album: Bitte Orca
Temecula Sunrise (live)
Temecula Sunrise (album)

Clash of the Titans is big, dumb, noisy, vacuous, insipid, sloppy, joyless, and clichéd.  Dirty Projectors isn't.

Dirty Projectors has been labelled "experimental rock" in the same vein as Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, and I suppose the description has some merit.  The band's music is, after all, somewhat more abstract than typical pop fare.  But when I listen to this tune my first impression is of crystalline purity, of utter simplicity, despite the superficial business of the music.  Each melodic and harmonic line is clean and vividly distinct.  Add even a single strummed guitar chord and the song would be diminished.

There is something in Dirty Projectors that reminds me of the polyphonic music of the late Renaissance and Baroque periods.  Not in terms of melody or harmony, of course, but there is a textural similarity in my opinion, a fundamental clarity in the way the music is composed.

Or maybe I'm reaching.  Whatever.  I like it.  And at least it's not a shitty Hollywood spring blockbuster.

p.s. Thanks to Kris for re-introducing me to the band.  Good on ya.