Dirty Projectors - Temecula Sunrise EP
With two songs from their latest critically acclaimed album ‘Bitte Orca’ and two original tracks, this bite-sized EP from the Dirty Projectors is a tasty introduction to a band that can be mind numbingly frustrating and difficult and then glittering and beautiful all in the space of one song.
So wonderfully received was their latest album that it came 56 in Pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the naughties (above Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi…’, White Stripes ‘Elephant‘ and Joanna Newsom‘s ‘Ys‘ amongst many others). Whether the album is still that high on the list in ten years time will be interesting to see, but it still makes the Dirty Projectors a very interesting proposition indeed.
The two album tracks are by far the pick of the bunch here. ‘Temecula Sunrise’ opens up (it’s a city in California don’t you know) with jazzy rhythms and raining guitar strokes, timed to mathematical precision like Field Music (or The Week That Was as they are now known). On the first few listens it feels like the track is bouncing all over the room with no sustained logic, but after repeated efforts a solid structure appears and the track becomes sing-along-able.
The other album track ’Cannibal Resource’ is the same, albeit with distracting but still charming Teletubbies backing vocals.
The new tracks don’t appeal quite as strongly but ‘Ascending Melody’ still sounds like no one else around at the moment with delicate funky melodies and snow-falling harmonies.
Overall this EP is a fine introduction to a band that are wonderfully unique to much else out there, so it is a great place to start. But for people in the know already this is probably a completists purchase only.