A quick heads up - Dirty Projectors have recorded a 30 minute session for Sirius XMU, a North American indie rock radio station.
The show is broadcast today at 4:00 pm ET, then again on Sunday at 12:00 pm ET. The No Intention performance is already on YouTube.
Kids, eh? The earliest footage of Dirty Projectors on YouTube is a 2006 performance from SXSW. It’s just a couple of minutes of Not Having Found, but astonishing and thrilling nonetheless. The same lineup recorded a session for Austin’s KVRX Radio on 17 March 2006 and two of the songs - Not Having Found and Fucked For Life - are available from KVRX as mp3 downloads. There are pictures too, including one of guitarist Spencer Kingman eating an onion as if it were an apple. In other words, this is another essential addition to the Dirty Projectors canon.
Back in 2009, the Temecula Sunrise EP looks like it could go either way. Manchester’s Piccadilly Records shows it as a very specific 400-copies-only 12″ single coming out on Monday, whereas it seems to have disappeared from the Domino release schedule altogether. Over on Pitchfork, Bitte Orca was voted the 56th best album of the decade in their Top 200 albums of the 2000s feature. Cue a retread of the “This list is sooo WRONG!” / “Come on, it’s only a poll” debate. Hey, it is only a poll.
So, despite sounding like ‘kangaroo’, it turns out Bonnaroo isn’t in Australia but Tennessee. Who knew? Dirty Projectors’ appearance at the festival there earlier this year ended with a guest appearance from David Byrne, joining the band for Knotty Pine. There’s a nice audience recording of this and the rest of the set by, confusingly, an Aussie guy called Morris, here.
Definitely located in Australia is ABC - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A few weeks back, Dave did a phone interview with the ABC/Triple J’s Mornings With Zan radio programme. No surprises - who wants to delve too deep at nine in the morning? - but it’s worth a listen.
For more depth, and some surface, try Pitchfork’s Take Cover interview with Rob Carmichael, discussing his design of the Bitte Orca album cover. The piece touches on, but doesn’t explain, Nietzsche’s appearance opposite Dave on the back cover. Maybe unconnected but in the Making Music interview, Dave mentioned being into Wagner whilst at college. Nietzsche was a contemporary of Wagner and, for a time, a big advocate of Wagner’s music, with characteristically strong ideas about art and its role as a palliative against the chaos of the world. If you’re still in need of something to listen to after Bonnaroo and ABC, Philosophy Bites has two excellent podcasts covering Nietzsche’s take on art, truth and morality.
OK, here’s a real gem for you. You might have seen Dave’s contribution to Pitchfork’s P2K Guest List 2000s Edition wherein various musicians list their favourite albums of the decade. Dave’s is a diverse list, ranging from Radiohead to Usher to Group Doueh. But a pick that won’t come as a surprise to close DPs followers is B’Day by Beyonce.
This 2007 session contains further evidence of B’Day’s place in the Dirty Projectors canon - track one consists of two minutes of the girls warming up their voices and Suga Mama from B’Day is joyfully prominent.
As if that’s not enough, the session was recorded outdoors, in an Ann Arbor parking lot, and was followed by some funny business with a stranger playing piano in the back of a truck. Angel accompanied him on flute (did you think she only sang and played guitar, bass and keyboards?) and, this being the uh-ohs, someone captured it all on video and posted it on myspace.
It looks as if this was the penultimate session that Cloak & Dagger ever did - among the most recent content on the site is a 2007 top ten page in which Rise Above is #1 for three out of four of the staff. Let’s hope they are putting their talents to good use elsewhere.
Be sure to stop by at WXPN’s World Cafe and listen to Dirty Projectors in session and in conversation with a slightly awed-sounding host. The Daytrotter sessions set a very high standard but the four Bitte Orca songs here maintain the hit rate, beautifully played and recorded. The acoustic version of No Intention is a particular highlight.
Meanwhile over on YouTube there’s a ton more clips from the tour including some good ones from Williamsburg Waterfront and the full set from San Diego Casbah, a show notable for a guest appearance by Susanna Waiche, who sang on Rise Above before Angel joined the band. The cameraman maybe needs reminding that stillness is also the move when it comes to recording gig footage but he gets a good spot down the front and we are grateful. Nat fanciers may want to skip to the later songs for some bare chest bass playing action.
Lastly, Pitchfork has a Director’s Cut interview with Matthew Lessner, talking about the Stillness Is The Move music video and Amber appears on the cover of Bygones‘ debut album, By-. Yes, that’s the title and that’s the cover at the top of this post.