Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors
Critic Score
Based on 39 reviews
2017 Ratings: #266 / 940
User Score
Based on 355 ratings
2017 Rank: #444
Liked by 8 people
February 21, 2017 / Release Date
LP / Format
Domino / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Record Collector
Dirty Projectors have released their career highlight to date and already one of 2017’s best. Encore surely.
94
Sputnikmusic

Dirty Projectors is back with a reshaped identity, serving up experimental/artistic indie-pop while retaining its penchant for eclecticism and unpredictability.

91
Entertainment Weekly

After spending recent years behind the scenes ... he’s applied some of his musical tourism to Dirty Projectors to convey a batch of hyper-specific lyrics through an often-thrilling blend of electronica, prog-rock, Afro-beat, R&B, and pop.

90
musicOMH

Dirty Projectors may be a breakup record, and one with its fair share of petty sniping ... but, cathartic and redemptive, it’s one worth getting to know.

90
Uncut

At times, Dirty Projectors recalls the polyphonic adventurism of Bon Iver’s 22, A Million and Sufjan Stevens’ The Age Of Adz. Like those records, it takes conventional songs and plants bombs beneath them, but Longstreth’s immersion is more brazen.

90
The 405

Reduced to his own devices, our gentleman hero has crafted both the most intrinsically soulful, emotional, and heartfelt record of his career. No less, he's delivered on one of music's greatest archetypes – and with aplomb.

90
GIGsoup
Though “Dirty Projectors” maintains the same off-beat music style as previous albums, there is a quality to this album that makes it hauntingly beautiful and dark.
85
Spectrum Culture
In its inherently juxtapositional and flawed delivery, the album approximates heartbreak, grief, reflection and remorse more suitably than most other records on the subject in recent memory.
83
A.V. Club

Heartbreak can be overwhelming, inspiring, and exhausting, and with Dirty Projectors, Longstreth has birthed an album that strives to not only reflect that, but to mimic it, too.

80
Clash

It affords listeners the space to grapple with the loss of Dirty Projectors in their previous form, while dispensing enough nurturing, boundary-breaking tonic to ensure that the first run-out for the project's next chapter is shrouded in optimism rather than dissolution, unforeseen obstacles and all.

80
Drowned in Sound

The record works not because it feels cynical, but because beneath the obvious lyrical headlines, you can sense Longstreth’s genuine enthusiasm for the new forms he’s exploring so vigorously.

80
The Guardian

For the most part ... this is work of emotional and musical maturity: sad, complex and sometimes profound.

80
NOW Magazine
Over lush, sprawling production, Longstreth meticulously crafts a starkly honest account of a fall from grace and a rise back into it that embraces growth and forgiveness.
80
The Observer
David Longstreth’s breakup with former bandmate Amber Coffman is inescapable on this incendiary nine-song set.
80
Dork
As the album moves forward, each of its nine tracks side-step you. It’s impossible to know what’s coming next.
80
Mixmag
Fusing sonic intricacies, captivating melodies and compelling storytelling, Dirty Projectors’ eighth LP is their most honest and affecting yet.
80
Q Magazine
It is, as always, complicated, but addictively, intriguingly so.
80
Evening Standard
It could have been a lonesome lament, but Longstreth’s creative rebirth has resulted in some audacious tunes and a genre-defying album.
80
Rolling Stone

Longstreth may be lonely, but he isn't alone, and his collaborators push him to new heights.

80
AllMusic

The broken-hearted Longstreth sounds like a changed man in many respects, but he's no less talented and visionary than he was before, and Dirty Projectors demonstrates that musically and lyrically, love and its absence have taught him a thing or two.

80
The Skinny

At times, its unflinchingly honest exploration of post-breakup stages and head spaces is difficult listening. But this is also its biggest strength, as Longstreth’s lyrics take the listener through bitterness, anger, melancholy, self-pity and remorse.

80
Under the Radar

Complex layered production and funky beats jump off in different directions mixing autotune with tracked voices, everything zeroing back in on the trauma of love lost and love obliterated.

80
DIY
Dave Longstreth conjures up something resembling a clear picture from all the record’s wildly disparate elements, and ‘Dirty Projectors’ serves to unify his most experimental moments with the door-opening impact of ‘Bitte Orca’.
78
Pitchfork

In what is ostensibly a solo record with a few high-profile collaborations, Dave Longstreth masterfully peels away layer after layer of heartbreak across a strange, dizzying pop album.

75
The Line of Best Fit

Whilst self-titling the record helps bring the project back into relevance after a long hiatus, it also seems to affirm its own identity after its own loss; the record features neither Coffman nor Angel Deradoorian, but it is still a Dirty Projectors record.

75
Consequence of Sound

As a solo project, Dirty Projectors works well. As significant of a shift as this album is from past Dirty Projectors’ records, the detailed production and arranging work shows Longstreth put all of himself into making it.

73
Northern Transmissions

It’s a lush, sometimes confounding post-pop experiment that comes without the other key players that served alongside him over the last decade.

70
The Needle Drop

Dirty Projectors return with an entirely revamped sound.

70
Exclaim!

Voyeuristic as it is, Dirty Projectors truly does feel like a record he had to make, not to mention one that's well worth our attention.

60
PopMatters

What Longstreth attempts to pass as daring, confessional experimentation often veers closer to self-indulgence, however, and too often he comes across as an unsympathetic character in his own narrative.

60
Loud and Quiet

Only occasionally ... does Longstreth’s wonderful musical inventiveness distract sufficiently from the distinctly unbecoming, angry and chiding atmosphere of ‘Dirty Projectors’.

58
Pretty Much Amazing
I dunno, I hope Longstreth is happy and hope this album is something he needed to get out of his system before he goes back to making good music again. But on the basis of this, and on Animal Collective’s last album, there may simply not be many promising places left to go in this direction, not that I have any better suggestions.
57
Paste

The songs do feel new, untested, sharply divorced from previous iterations of the band. Gone is the tuneful swirl of female vocals that made the Bitte Orca-era songs sound so delirious and vibrant.

50
No Ripcord

We can only assume that there’s a deep meaning within the songs’ hall-of-mirrors approach to songwriting, but Dirty Projectors ultimately leaves one too puzzled to empathize with apart from letting out a false, mouth-gaping awe.

50
Tiny Mix Tapes

Dirty Projectors mainly functions as just that: a snapshot of an artist as viewed from the outside, struggling to create something that applies to anybody but himself.

40
Mojo
Art rock meets R&B producing an over-egged new hybrid.
40
The Independent

David Longstreth’s account of his separation from former bandmate Amber Coffman told through a welter of autotuned, over-treated vocals and jumble of clashing sounds that, to be generous, may be intended as an analogue of the ground shifting beneath their disintegrating relationship.

R1v3r__
100

A beautiful and subtle journey through David Longstreth's mentality after a breakup

33coco33
84

Dirty Projectors is back with a very good album, live up to his expectations.

It mixes the experimental/indie/art pop universe that the band has built, electronic effects (glitch), and R&B interpretations (like Death Spiral) that sometimes sound like some of James Blake's songs. It gives an innovative and futuristic character to the album.

Dirty Projectors LP transcends pop music, especially Little Bubble, strange and of rare beauty, which sublimates the album.

Nevertheless, the songs ... read more

EMR
44

After the mildly interesting Swing Lo Magellan, the eccentric indie-rockers Dirty Projectors are back with what might be their most experimental effort to date. The first thing to notice here is that there a lot less vocal harmonies than what we may be used to hear from the band. Second, what the listener will get in this self-titled album is an amalgam of oddball indie-rock/pop tunes that blend all of the Dirty Projectors' many facets into amorphous compositions, this time relying much more on ... read more

vaf_music
100

this is literally the music i want to make one day. the compositions, quirks and production are things that leave me in awe every listen and sit in an amazing middle ground between accessibility and wild left field ideas and glitches. one of my favorite albums of all time.

81

Cold, but with a somewhat hopeful sound (especially towards the end). While some tracks wear their welcome, the highlights (Death Spiral, Up in Hudson) deftly balance catchy sounds and more experimental soundscapes. The lyrics are both tragic and hopeful, capturing a break-up in a very honest manner. Definitely a unique album worth hearing at least once.

Favorites: Death Spiral, Up in Hudson, I See You

holsgr
30

questionable (★★☆☆☆)

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Added on: January 18, 2017