Few musicians have embraced the idea of a clean break more enthusiastically than Dave Longstreth, bandleader of experimental indie outfit Dirty Projectors. His group’s self-titled eighth record is a breakup album on three counts, documenting his separation from girlfriend and former band member Amber Coffman; from a chunk of the rest of his group (Coffman and fellow vocalist Angel Deradoorian are nowhere to be heard on the record), and even from indie itself, given the scathing takedown of the genre he posted on Instagram earlier this month.
Here the band venture further into the futuristic R&B of 2012’s Swing Lo Magellan, with the focus firmly on Longstreth and Coffman’s relationship woes. Opener Keep Your Name is a deliciously caustic kiss-off, with Longstreth’s pitch-shifted vocals declaring “What I want from art is truth, what you want is fame”, while the delicate Up in Hudson traces the pair’s relationship from their first encounter in the Bowery Ballroom to its eventual end. As ever, there’s a lot going on here musically: Longstreth’s labyrinthine vocal lines criss-cross with glitchy snatches of samples, and without the lightness of Coffman and Deradoorian’s doo-wop harmonies, things occasionally get a little dense. For the most part, though, this is work of emotional and musical maturity: sad, complex and sometimes profound.
