Bitte Orca
After spinning heads with *Rise Above*, an album that reimagined Black Flag’s *Damaged* purely from memory, Dirty Projectors drove home everything that made them special with *Bitte Orca*, sweetening their tense, knotty tunes with a sinuous, almost-R&B feel. Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian’s spectacular backing vocals are pushed to the fore, taking the lead to great effect on “Stillness Is the Move,” with Dave Longstreth’s meticulous arrangements now serving his most direct and unselfconsciously lovely songs to date.
Brooklyn, NY based Dirty Projectors' 5th full-length album Bitte Orca was one of 2009's true standout albums, garnering best-of-the-year praise from the likes of the Guardian, New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Magnet and many more. David Longstreth formed Dirty Projectors in 2002 and the group now consists of Angel Deradoorian, Amber Coffman, Brian Mcomber and David as principal members. Dirty Projectors also introduced an expanded six member lineup with the addition of bassist Nat Baldwin and vocalist Haley Dekle for their recent live dates, and for a number of tracks on Bitte Orca.
The challenging art-poppers led by Dave Longstreth have made their best and most accessible album, a record that's one of the year's real highlights.
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’…
Dave Longstreth's extraordinary art pop project continues to confound and compel with an album embracing styles as diverse as chamber folk, African blues and R&B. James Dalrymple reviews
In<b> ‘Bitte Orca’ </b>they maintain a sense of superiority over an everyday modern pop act, whilst incorporating one outstanding detail into each and every song, an accessibility factor, shall we say, that makes the whole listen stick in your head rather than forcing you to scratch it in bewilderment.
Dirty Projectors' mastermind David Longstreth appears to be attracted to sounds that will simultaneously draw in and confound the average listener; he has a clear, sweet voice and a gift for well-crafted harmonies and melodies that bring out the innate beauty of his music, but he often weds them to fractured time signatures that cause the songs to shift gear at the least expected moments, and he tosses in sudden bursts of atonal skronk that are either bracing or puzzling, depending on your point of view.
Elusive Brooklyn innovators Dirty Projectors are unafraid to stretch convention – so much so that previous releases have teetered on a fine line between experimental and unliste
<p>It's no wonder bloggers love Brooklyn indie rockers Dirty Projectors, who, this time, remember to add tunes</p>
Bitte Orca is every bit Merriweather Post Pavilion’s equal in terms of navigating uncharted sonic territory.
For those who have followed Dirty Projectors from the beginning, there had to be some feeling that the band was working towards something, some notion that...
<p>Attention reveals a compositional precision and unique melodic gift, says <strong>Tom Hughes</strong></p>
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca review: Bitte Orca is an unorthodox listen; racking your brain and melting your heart all in the same instant, and that is something to appreciate