I’ve got a list of must-see attractions in Los Angeles, and I’ve been slowly ticking them off since we moved. I should be able to see everything on the list at some point within the next 30 years or so.1For contrast: I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for about 25 years, and I’m a fan of Vertigo, but I still to this day have never visited the Legion of Honor. One of those was seeing the LA Philharmonic perform at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. So I was happily surprised last year to see that Dirty Projectors, one of my “new”2New in that I first discovered them within the last few years favorite bands, would be doing a performance with the orchestra in March.
The performance was the US debut of Song of the Earth, which was described as “…a song cycle for orchestra and voices written by Dirty Projectors leader David Longstreth. A kaleidoscopic work that takes inspiration from Gustav Mahler’s 1908 piece Das Lied Von Der Erde (The Song of the Earth) as much as Brian Wilson’s pocket symphonies, Song of the Earth explores the cyclical character of life and death, nature, and the transience of all things.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I definitely didn’t expect to love all of it. While there are a dozen or so songs by Dirty Projectors that I absolutely love, I have to admit that I rarely listen through the entire album, and there are still dozens of songs that I have yet to even hear. My quick-and-shallow take on David Longstreth — with the obvious acknowledgement that the band isn’t a solo act, and several of their songs are collaborations — is that he’s “an easily-bored genius;” he’s entirely capable of writing catchy and melodic alt-rock or alt-pop with a memorable hook, but he has little interest in leaving it at that. Most of their songs have some weird twist to them, like sudden changes in rhythm, voices that shift from harmony to discord and back, overlapping time signatures, or layers of percussion or unexpected sound effects. A blurb on Apple Music accurately described it as “dense.” I expected that even if I didn’t love all of it, it would at the very least be interesting.
(I should mention that as I understand it, their most recent studio project 5EPs as treated as a collaboration between Longstreth and the other members of the band, with each EP emphasizing one of the other musicians. That yielded the wonderful “Overlord” with Maia Friedman, which was perfectly timed as a voice of calm in the midst of a pandemic and a disastrous American presidency, a seemingly straightforward and lovely song with lyrics that serve a reminder of the dangers of moral relativism. Anyway, my point is that even a beautiful and straightforward-seeming song from Dirty Projectors has more going on than you might think from the surface).
Anyway, I was correct. It was interesting throughout — frankly, no small achievement for an hour-long orchestral piece — and I actually enjoyed it even more than I’d expected to. I don’t know enough about music to say anything particularly insightful about it; my frame of reference is inevitably going to keep it at the “this movie has a Boss Baby quality to it”3Paraphrasing a tweet that went something like: *someone who has only ever seen the movie Boss Baby while watching their second movie* This movie has a Boss Baby quality to it. level. Much of it reminded me of “Orion” from Brazil by Phillip Glass, other parts reminded me of James Bond themes, and of course, some of it felt like Dirty Projectors. The marimba and xylophone were prominent (literally; they were at the front of the stage), and there was a particularly great section that reminded me a little of the soundtrack to Akira.
Not at all surprising was that vocals were used throughout, both from Longstreth and from Friedman, Felicia Douglass, and Olga Bell. Longstreth has a track record of teaming up with amazing vocalists, and there’s a history in Dirty Projectors music of using vocals in interesting ways. One part let Douglass take lead with a more conventional melody, but the entire performance was marked with harmonies and repetitions of a simple phrase, like “Yeah yeah yeah” or “I do not want this,” feeling less like lyrics and more like another part of the orchestra. Something I probably wouldn’t have appreciated if I hadn’t seen it live is just how much the performance emphasized vocals as instruments, instead of just carriers of lyric or melody. A couple of parts had Longstreth singing along with a saxophonist. They weren’t doing harmonies or lead/backup, but keeping perfectly in sync, so it was as if he’d added another timber and register to his voice.
After Song of the Earth, the orchestra left (to a standing ovation), and Longstreth remained on stage. He thanked everyone for coming to the show having no idea what they were getting themselves into, and then, after what must’ve been a physically and mentally exhausting hour-long performance, started a stripped-down set of Dirty Projectors songs. He was joined by the rest of the current lineup of the band, performing about six or seven songs, including “Overlord,” “Impregnable Question,” “Rise Above,” and “Holy Mackerel.” I associate Dirty Projectors so much with high-minded art music that it was nice to see them lightening up and showing their sense of humor.
I hadn’t realized how much my perception of the band was colored by discovering them around the beginning of the pandemic and a dark time for everyone, and seeing the video for “My Possession” felt like everyone had made it out of a dark tunnel. And the performance last night felt like a victory for them, after having spent years building up to it.
One other very nice surprise from the show: I happened to be seated behind the members of the band mmeadows, Cole Kamen-Green and former (?) Dirty Projector Kristin Slipp. As we were leaving the theater, I got the chance to tell them how much I liked their album, and how I’ve been listening to “By Design” almost constantly. They were extremely gracious, and I appreciate any chance I get to tell an artist how much I enjoy their work.
