Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca [Album]

Domino Records

June 16, 2009, 03:31 AM

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Having leaked two months prior to its release date, Bitte Orca has enjoyed early critical success with eminent praises from popular music tasters like Stereogum and Pitchfork and it's hard not to see why, really. It is an album that not only celebrates musical possibilities but it's also bent on making an intrepid, aural statement, which screams radically close to an indie-rock miracle.

What makes Bitte Orca work so well is that beneath the sheaths of multitudinous instrumentation and artful prose, lies a core of mellifluous melodies that traverse the album from start to finish. Because they're so fetching and beatific, you'll catch yourself humming to them in a subconscious abandon. Be it waiting for the train at the subway station or leisurely strolling down the street, the tunes have a way of looping themselves around your brain and staying hermetically sealed inside your head. But Dirty Projectors does more than just that; they have, along with Grizzly Bear, surfaced Brooklyn's experimental denomination to mass pop likability without compromising their spirit of art-rock innovation and eclectic harmonic distinction.

Now, let's discuss the songs. "Cannibal Resource" sucks you into its whirlpool of dissolving falsettos, snappy guitar licks and sun-lit lyrics: "Look around at everyone / Everyone looks alive and waiting / The wind is up, the stars out / The sun is calm, the light is fading" - it sure seems like the perfect summer surf song. Following up on the seasonal zest, "Temecula Sunrise" is an ode to hot, greasy midsummer nights and nooky sojourns. Dirty Projector's sound further spans the gamut from a strange but intriguing fusion of fluttering synth pop with sensual R&B grooves (no kidding!) to an exquisite serenade of reposing vocals buttressed by a bed of acoustic string play in "Two Doves". Quite frankly, it reminds you of long walks at the beach and watching the ocean melt away into the sky.

Just when we think that things can't get any better, Dirty Projectors proves us wrong once again. It is here in "Useful Chamber" that the album's strength gloriously exemplifies itself. The punch-drunk synth beats side step with choral spoors of "uhhh"s and "ahhh"s before the song ruptures to a flush of fiery, rumpus chants in the form of "Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte!"; this is the sound of art-pop in an inebriated high. And, quite ironically, it's this abrupt upheaval that brings everything - from Longstreth's peppy vocals to the twisting melodic lines - to a splendid equilibrium.

Like every stellar album this year, there's the routine tribute to the tribal soul. A soukous-guitar riff skims on the repetitious yelps in "Remade Horizon" and Longstreth has never sounded this eager, something which comes off dangerously close to desperation, and that brings me to my single criticism of Bitte Orca. While the song expands the parameters of the album, Bitte Orca is too good, too inventive to merely satisfy the pedestrian checklist of the general audience and critics alike; but the fault here is too marginal to defile the rest of the album and it still stands a testament to the indomitable position the quintet holds as the new front runners of the Brooklyn indie scene.

With Bitte Orca, Dirty Projectors have found the perfect balance between experimentation and connection, and they do so with an immaculate exactness that's so awe-inspiring, it's enough to breed a whole new fan base and incur bitter jealousy from their contemporaries. It is way up there as one the year's very best, among the ranks of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Veckatimest, and it is here that their zealous potential erupts in a dazzling union of symmetry, art and nous; all of which are amplified in a fully rapturous 9-part symphony.

Is it too early to call this 2009's indie album of the year?
Maybe.

But anyone attempting to rival Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca from hereon will have the arduous task of catching a speeding train, which has advanced so far ahead in the game that all that's left is a trail of smoke and dust - something which their unfortunate contenders will be biting on.

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