Dirty Projectors
Longstreth’s claim that the record represents an attempt “to reimagine American music by recreating the marriage of African music and European music in their purer, unbastardized forms” holds a little water, but only because he has an unusual talent for stitching radically different genres together–his hybrid form isn’t a blend so much as a contrived, almost perverse combination of familiar elements, like a cream cheese and parrot sandwich. Taken together, the “European” chamber-music elements, the “African” percussion and rhythms, and Longstreth’s own wandering croon–a peculiar, wobbly tenor that tips easily into falsetto–create a dreamlike state where alienation and familiarity coexist without tension.
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Longstreth’s preoccupation with the Eagles began honestly enough–his brother is a huge fan–and he’s since come to see the band as an unwitting agent of cultural imperialism. He says that while he was living in Ecuador in 1999, someone was “always singing ‘Hotel California.’ It reminded me of how Christian missionary songs were used as the first element of colonization.” But this sociopolitical subtext, sincere as it may be, is deflated by Henley’s presence as a sort of ironic punch line–the title alone compromises the evocative music, which on its own is stately and sad, conjuring images of a ruined palace submerged under a sheet of black ice. Nobody wants to be picturing the Hotel California sinking into a pool of pink champagne.
Where: Subterranean, 2011 W. North
