Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth seems like a very nice, easygoing guy, but he's about to get angry. "Fuck!" yells Longstreth into his phone, while walking around his Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. "I had this awesome biscuit, and I'm walking down the street, and I just dropped it on the ground!" This outburst is understandable.
The Brooklyn-based sextet -- singer/guitarist Longstreth along with a rhythm section and three multi-instrumentalists/vocalists -- have had few days off for eating biscuits this year. Their newest album, "Bitte Orca," has garnered the best reviews of their seven-year career, and they recently collaborated with David Byrne and Björk, performed on "The Late Show With David Letterman" and saw a song from "Orca" ("Stillness Is the Move") place at 115 on Pitchfork's "Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s." Not a bad nine months. When asked whether he expected "Bitte Orca" to explode as it has, Longstreth says, "No, I didn't. I really had no idea. [But] it's funny to hear you characterize it as an explosion.
"I guess to us it just feels like ... we've been touring a lot, and been around for a while." However, he added, "It's exciting." The attention is deserved. "Bitte Orca" is a mesmerizing record, in which guitar snippets and winding vocal phrases cohere brilliantly on songs that range from straightforward rock to Nico-like balladry.
Dirty Projectors plays the Cedar Cultural Center Wednesday.
The band's musicianship is staggering: Guitar work resembles that of West African-influenced indie bands like Vampire Weekend, but with twists and turns you never see coming. Melodies snake and leap around a scale, yet the songs are well written and instantly hummable. Zeppelin riffs blend with new-wave vocal tics; songs turn on a dime to become different songs entirely. With its charming combination of precision and chaos, the album lets listeners feel like they're seeing both the forest and the trees.
Longstreth, the band's main songwriter, says that writing these songs was the result of many techniques.
"I try to keep it fresh and do it kind of different every time," he said. "It's good if you're confused and disoriented about what you're supposed to be doing, so you don't fall into any bullshit habits." Longstreth says he often develops beats on a computer, then creates melodies and chords based on those particular rhythms. The breakout single "Stillness Is the Move," an insanely infectious blend of indie-rock and late-'80s R&B, followed this approach.
"I gave myself three days and I tried to make 30 beats," said Longstreth. "I think ["Stillness"] was the second beat that I made. The first one was shitty, and the other 28 were shitty, but that one beat was kind of cool."
He soon realized the song would be a perfect chance to showcase Dirty Projectors singer/guitarist Amber Coffman with her soulful lead vocal on the track.
"I totally just wanted to make a song for Amber and [covocalist] Angel [Deradoorian] on the album. And right from the first, this beat -- I was like, 'This should be Amber's song.' I knew that in order for Amber to bring it the way we wanted her to, she'd have to connect with the words. It was kind of just trial and error. All those freestyles are just kind of her going for it. She just has such an encyclopedic knowledge."
Excitement for "Bitte Orca's" release in June was helped along by the band's appearance on "Dark Was the Night," the benefit album for the Red Hot organization, which raises money for AIDS research. Dirty Projectors' contribution was "Knotty Pine," a collaboration with Talking Heads' David Byrne. The track was released early to bloggers and music journalists, most of whom concurred that the song was a big step forward for the band. The collaboration with Byrne was made possible by Red Hot producer Aaron Dessner (also of the National) and executive director John Carlin.
"They thought of putting us two together, and they asked us, and I think we were sort of like, 'Yes, that would be awesome,'" said Longstreth, sounding like he still can't believe his luck. "David sent me this short, little pithy poem that he wrote. 'This never turned into anything 30 years ago, do you want to set it to music?'"
Longstreth and Byrne turned out to be natural collaborators. They share a fondness for songs with seemingly dissimilar parts adding up to a whole -- think of Byrne's odd, swirling arrangement for "Once in a Lifetime" -- and a penchant for making strangeness accessible.
After recording a song with one of their idols, Dirty Projectors got to play onstage with another. In May, the band performed at a benefit for homeless people with AIDS and HIV at a bookstore in SoHo -- with Icelandic star Björk at the mike. Longstreth is as surprised as anyone about these milestones.
"Who gets the opportunity to meet, let alone work creatively with their artistic heroes once in their life?" he raved. "It's really kind of unexpected and amazing."
At the same time, Longstreth sees his band's successful year as part of a larger trend in the democratization of indie music. He points to abstract singer/songwriter St. Vincent's June appearance on Letterman's show.
"The turn toward experimental or much smaller, more homemade music on national television is so surprising," he says. "The whole vibe is shifting because of the Internet. These marketing-created, major-label stars, where you put in $100 million in the hope of getting $200 million back -- it's just not a sustainable model anymore. It's a great thing for music."
That trend is also what made it possible for his band to embark on a high-profile tour that reaches the Cedar Culture Center on Wednesday. If you see Longstreth before the show, get the poor guy a biscuit.
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