Dishing The Dirt: Dirty Projectors

We meet Dave Longstreth – singer and self-proclaimed musical director – of Dirty Projectors ahead of the band’s gig at London’s Cargo. The band have just released ‘Rise Above’ an album based around Black Flag’s 1981 release ‘Damaged’. It takes ten songs from the album as its loose basis – the story goes that the band remade the album without prepping themselves by listening to the original and so it was crafted from memory.  The resulting album adds a beauty and tenderness to Black Flag’s original songs. Though this is not to say they lose any of their power, they just hit you in different ways. Often it’s the way Dave drains every last syllable out of every lyric that affects you most. The songs are almost completely restructured and certainly the timbre of the songs has shifted. The changes to the originals are many: a woodwind intro is added to ‘Police Story’, ‘Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie’ is all R’n’B style female harmonies whilst ‘Room 13’ starts out as a soft ballad and ends with a string section.

Dave explains how the record came about: “My parents were moving from the east coast of America to the west coast and I had to go up there to clean out all of my old childhood stuff, found this tape case of an album I listened to as a teenager and I, err…I don’t know, I wanted to remake it.”

We add a comment we read about how it was Dave’s favourite album as an adolescent, which he quickly denies: “It wasn’t. Somebody made that up”. Gigwise can’t help but feel a little disappointed. Perhaps it’s a writer’s tendency to romanticise things. I want him to declare how vital that album was to him growing up. Describe how the album’s themes of angst, rebellion and alienation resonated with him as a teenager. Maybe a nice little memory of him huddled over the tape player, the music booming loud out the speakers having some incredibly profound affect on him. But no, no matter how much he is questioned as to that album’s significance Dave simply states vaguely “it was just there”. As if – had this been any other album he had come across that day when he revisited his childhood home it would have received just the same treatment: he would have embarked on the very same journey.

Was it quite important though? “I think it was. But I liked a lot of different music. It was more just…it was there, you know?”

What was it about it that made you pick up on it and want to remake it? “That’s what I’m not sure of. The more people have asked me this question the less I am sure of it. I think I just did it because it was there.”

Dave remains vague and elusive when answering questions about his own music. Asked how he would describe the music he makes – something which so many seem to struggle to do, at least in clearly defined terms - he ponders for a moment: “I’m with them on that struggle. I guess I make it so I don’t have to describe it.” Is it something you aim for – to make something that is not easily categorizable? “I don’t start from the position of ‘Let’s make something inscrutable’, you know what I mean? But it’s more just like…that’s the way I make music, I guess.”