Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo, Magellan
Sometimes you hear an album so dauntingly great, you wonder what the artist could possibly do for an encore. Other times you hear an album so great, you know exactly where it goes from here, for the artist has found home, the genuine voice. Swing Lo, Magellan is a masterpiece of the latter kind. Dave Longstreth and company have made a handful of the weirdest records ever called pop, Beefheartian in their singularity and otherworldliness, asymmetrical, upsettingly herky-jerky, unapologetically avant-garde from the word go.
Swing Lo, Magellan finds pop in all the most unlikely places. It’s a goldmine of high-definition melody, artfully sparse arrangement, a fusion of art, soul, African guitar stylings and homely, emotional balladry. Granted, Longstreth still sounds more comfortable, more like himself, when singing, “How could I hope to seize the tablet of values and redact it?” in “About to Die” than when managing the oddly ceremonious sentiment of “Impregnable Question”:
Through time, and through many a situation
We both look forward, side-by-side
We have shared it all, we have both stood tall
What is mine is yours, in happiness and in strife
You’re my love, and I want you in my life.
Well, give him a break. Simple feeling and its declaration may still be a new thing to this smart guy. And on Swing Lo, Magellan, Dirty Projectors find humanity without sounding any less alien.
Says Eamon: “Dirty Projectors fill a musical need I didn’t know I had.”
Jesca Hoop, The House that Jack Built
Full disclosure: Hoop makes this list as much for her wildly underappreciated first two albums (Kismet and Hunting My Dress) as for this lively 2012 release. The melodies are fine as ever, whether arching and long as on the solo-guitar-and voice title track or terse and winking as on the postmodern electro-pop of “Hospital” or “Ode to Banksy.” The real growth here is in her lyrics: whole motives, fully explored, less reliance on a stylized persona to carry her through. More people need to hear the wonderful Jesca Hoop so that she might find the audience that she is due.
Says Eamon: “Tom Waits if Tom Waits were an ethereal witch.”
The Tallest Man on Earth, There’s No Leaving Now
The first time Eamon played me the Tallest Man on Earth, I just laughed – laughed out loud at this Swedish Helium-folk crooner with impossibly high spiritual aspirations. Then I listened. What a skill set Kristian Mattson has! He is an exceptional acoustic guitarist, and his singing, for all its ridiculous character, is virtuosic in its own way. The Wild Hunt (2010) was a true solo folk affair with a mind toward early Dylan. There’s No Leaving Now moves toward indie rock with a less derivative murky, lo-fi ensemble euphony. Some of the high-minded lyrical excess is curtailed and the ear for memorable folk hooks is above reproach.
Says Eamon: “Instead of dancing with woodland creatures, you’re visiting the mountains with a close friend. His voice sounds like a mystic chipmunk that knows something you don’t.”
Enough said. Let’s drive, shall we?
