Swing Lo Magellan
On Dirty Projectors sixth album, Swing Lo Magellan, songwriter and leader David Longstreth shows he really doesn't know how to do the same thing twice. Where prior Dirty Projectors albums investigated 20th-century orchestration, west African guitar music and complex contrapuntal techniques in human voices, Swing Lo Magellan is a leap forward again. It's an album of songs, an album of songwriting. Swing Lo Magellan has both the handmade intimacy of a love letter and the widescreen grandeur of a blockbuster, and if that sounds like a paradox -- it's because it was until now.
Dave Longstreth guides Dirty Projectors toward their most human and least ornate release yet. It's an album of deeply appealing simplicity that mixes subtle folk protest and gorgeous paeans to young love.
When David Longstreth sat down with 40 finished demos to plan the sixth Dirty Projectors album, there was the potential for creative overload: He’s never had a problem piling numerous experiments atop each other, so the record could have become a grotesque Frankenstein’s monster of patched-together ideas. Instead, Swin…
Aimed equally at the head and the heart, the band expand their appeal without shredding any of the idiosyncrasies that made them stand out in the first place.
Dirty Projectors have a history of creating delightfully grandiose records full of complex, sprawling arrangements and…
After the supposed avant-garde accessibility and commercial breakthrough of 2009's Bitte Orca -- an album that saw Solange Knowles cover the R&B-tinged and hook-laden single "Stillness in the Move" -- Swing Lo Magellan is the David Longstreth-led Dirty Projectors' sixth studio album.
Predicting the Dirty Projectors’ next step is a pointless task. Led by idiosyncratic frontman David Longstreth, the Brooklyn-based quintet explore rock's more challenging catacombs, often teetering on the verge of prog. But this tendency to experiment is, almost always, infused with an easy sense of melody that opens up awkward affairs like 2009’s gorgeous Bitte Orca.
Whether one has been charmed or lost by Dirty Projectors' free willingness to chase their muse anywhere the wind has blown it over the past 10 years, their latest album is a winner either way.
Dirty Projectors' streamlined sixth album combines the energy of old with a new-found directness, writes <strong>Hermione Hoby</strong>
Dirty Projectors 'Swing lo Magellan' album review on Northern Transmissions.
<strong>Alexis Petridis</strong>: Dirty Projectors have become more accessible without sacrificing their originality – whether they meant to or not
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan review: A brilliant blend of the outer limits and the down-to-earth.
Polyrhythmic perversity from Dave Longstreth and his willing minstrels. CD review by Nick Levine