Brooklyn avant-indie crooners Dirty Projectors bring their eclectic harmonies to the Jazz Festival

We’re not judging if Swing Lo Magellan is the first you’re hearing of experimental outfit Dirty Projectors, but here is a good place to start. It’s been a good 3 years since their last album, 2009‘s critically-acclaimed Bitte Orca, and the Brooklyn-based troubadours’ 7th full-length release is by far their most accessible, not to mention strongest effort yet.

While this release feels almost like a new debut with its easier listenability and stylistic reworking, bandmates Dave Longstreth, Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian et al have a decade behind them already, having put out volumes of often obtuse experimental material in the early-to-mid 2000s. Some of their more inscrutable works have the aural effect of wading into a fog of instrumental noise with Longstreth’s bleating serving as foghorns, blaring at you from unknowable directions; while others are lullaby-like, acoustic beauties in which Longstreth, Coffman and Deradoorian’s male-female harmonies inspire awe, not unlike a vocal equivalent of watching a contortionist performance.

Swing Lo Magellan takes root in hip-hop-inspired beats and boasts more hi-fi production than longtime listeners may be accustomed to, but both serve to strengthen Longstreth and the ladies’ enrapturing vocal excursions. Though the delivery and production are more palatable in this new stylistic incarnation, there is no feeling that they’ve sacrificed their ever-progressive aesthetic. If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to get listening and wade your way backwards in time through their extensive and often obfuscating repertoire – but first, test the waters with Swing Lo’s enchanting tracks “The Socialites” and “See What She Seeing”.

Dirty Projectors
July 7 | Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT)
1201, St. Laurent
with Purity Ring
dirtyprojectors.net