Bitte Orca

The time signatures of the songs are still hard to pin down, it’s often hard to understand what the specific theme of the songs are, and the guitar and vocal work is still inimitable. Through these familiar disorientations however, comes the sound of the Dirty Projectors’ most accessible album to date.

While still retaining that exacting focus that has made Dirty Projectors the unplaceable enterprise that it is, Bitte Orca is merely the sound of an extremely talented group of musicians tweaking and, to an extent, reinventing their approach, stepping a little further away from left field.

In an era of scripted and calculated music, the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants Dirty Projectors thrill at every blind turn they barrel through.

One of the most singularly engrossing albums likely to be released this year, a triumph in sustained creative restlessness.

Bitte Orca is the kind of album that is best taken from start to finish, where the songs and musical themes are allowed to grow, endear and impress.

These New Yorkers' fifth album continues to mark them out as one of rock's most compelling curiosities.

Bitte Orca isn't a record that'll reduce many to tears, except perhaps of awe. But when something's so astonishing in every other respect, we can allow for that.

The African guitars on No Intention jangle beautifully, and the alien R&B groove of Stillness Is the Move, with sultry vocals by Amber Coffman, might even become an unlikely hit. A challenging charmer.

The sound of a band making merry in the riggings. The great dash of sounds (from African hi-life guitars to r’n’b vocals) employed throughout is just the jump-off point for an album that knows no bounds and sees no stop signs.

Many may not have the patience to follow its somersaults. Those who do will be richly rewarded.

This is fresh music, making exciting shapes with primitive resources, and though some will find Longstreth's keening bleat and bravura deconstructions show-offy there are constant flowerings of devastating prettiness, and when all the singers blare in unison the beauty they summon is almost overwhelming.

Clever, original, complicated, sometimes frustrating but more often revelatory, it will, given time, uncover its manifold delights.

As a whole, Bitte Orca feels nothing less than a modern equivalent to Talking Heads' Fear Of Music or Scritti's Cupid & Psyche 85 –art-rock with intellectual rigour, borderless curiosity, and no fear of the mainstream. Pop, by any other name.

Bitte Orca is made of nine distinct and powerful songs, and perhaps that is what makes it more inviting than earlier albums.

The 2009 Projectors have adopted a more enjoyable model, thanks in part to Longstreth holding back that horn.

Longstreth's prickly surface belies a bright pop center: tart, sweet, and gushing all at once.

Bitte Orca is playful and romantic, and often quite bewildering, but for all the elastic singing and idiosyncratic structuring, it's also Longstreth's most lovable set yet.

While sometimes the avant-garde posturing can make for a chilly listen, emotionally at least, and the fragmented song structures can jar, there is no mistaking the radiating pop sensibility running throughout, which makes Bitte Orca a more accessible record than their past efforts, but a no less inventive one.

As relatively good as most of Bitte Orca is, ['Stillness Is The Move'] alone gives us reason enough to be optimistic: should Longstreth pursue his newfound fascination with mainstream music further, it's proof that the Dirty Projectors are capable of evolving into a far better pop band than their experimental selves ever let on.

Longstreth is not a brilliant visionary, but he has created a masterpiece to the extent that he is capable. Bitte Orca is either deliberately frustrating or frustratingly deliberate, but in any case, it’s worth a listen. Or two. Or three.

It's at once attention-deficient and micromanaged, exhilarating and aggravating.

Their seventh album remembers to add tunes, and is thus less baffling than before.

Interesting, but self indulgent.