... since the conformist anti-sophisticatedness and musical agnosticism of them Gallagher Bros.' (and others') heyday in the nineties. Sure, there are still a plethora of acts as mainstream as Ikea, perhaps in an even more nauseating way, but we do also have bands like Dirty Projectors, whose curiously titled album Bitte Orca of yesteryear scored an impressive 9.2 on Pitchfork's review-meter, and several other very favorable reviews. It's funny how reviewers tend to topple each other in being the first to praise the next wave of awkwardness, kitsch or downright uaestheticness. I mean, look at Jens Lekman: The man can barely sing in tune, let alone in English, and he still garners rave reviews everytime he picks his nose. Even I have developed a liking to his silly lyrical universe. Now they're Roskilde-bound, these Dirty Projectors, alongside HEALTH, Beach House and, albeit still unofficially, LCD Soundsystem, an ode to the fact that Roskilde is still alone on its pedestal in the upper echelon of Danish music festivals, for whomever it may concern, and a discreet but precise slap-in-face of the upstarts in Skive and at BeatDay.Bitte Orca is one of the most interesting records I've heard in a long time. Not beautiful, but interesting. It's like an incomprehensibly avant-garde piece of art that begs to be rightfully placed among Monets and GaudÃs, but at the same time stands out like a sore thumb in its undefinedness and inaccessibility. Opener 'Cannibal Resource' reminds me of Battles with its syncopated rhythms, cacophonous yelps and the odd untimely skronk. I love syncopated drums, and even more so, I am a big fan of skronks and other atonal and industrially-sounding noises, but still, Bitte Orca's main relevance for me will probably be the fact that I am likely to hear the masterpiece performed live.
This being said, it is an exceptionally intriguing piece of work. Take 'Two Doves', which is beautiful (in a cheap way), but gets interrupted by noises reminiscing a bee through a vocoder. Elsewhere on the album, the assoication which comes the most to mind would be 'jackhammer' or 'rear-wheel driven car stuck in snow'. 'Useful Chamber' is the album's highlight, in a number of ways. It is so intimate it even has a Jens Lekman-kind of moment, but then it explodes in what I would most approximately describe as 'wakarrgzonkk!!'. Then it becomes beautiful in an annoying way, turns into something as repetitive as your generic hard house, and ends in another syncopated madness. Then, on the other end, you've got 'Stillness Is the Move', which has very deep soul and especially R&B connotations. What I do like is the fact that Dave Longstreth, the man behind Dirty Projectors, is the kind of man who yells into the studio: "Hey, let's try out what'd happen if we did THIS", followed by his warping his guitar into some kind of almightily strange sound. Dirty Projectors is very difficult to define genre-wise, other than the very vague umbrella of 'experimental rock', but in a sense, this is because Dirty Projectors does not apply the limitations of being in a genre. Everything goes, but in a constructive way, rather than a loud and cacophonous one. Nevertheless, this is probably not an album I will listen to time and again.
Of the other announcements, LCD Soundsystem is by far the one that intrigues me the most. Actually it intrigues me way more than Dirty Projectors. I'm a big fan of his last album Sound of Silver, and I'm very curious to see what this proper musical whizz has cooked up when he releases his new album in May. HEALTH seems somewhat strenuous, but nevertheless, I do tend to like guitarists who spend more time tinkering with their pedalboard than playing their guitars. I guess that's my synthesizer-heritage. Don't like the dancing emo-punker with bad instrument/location of crowd-orientation in this live performance of 'Die Slow', though. Beach House off Sub Pop is a really cool and chilled outfit, try 'Zebra', but boy is there a lot of indie-folk these days! They're definitely worth a look come June though. I had however hoped for the likes of Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend, both of whom filled the teaser-bill like the triangular plug in the triangular hole. Next week please announce Foals, thank you.
In other news, Caribou has put out this remix of Oh No Ono's 'Eleanor Speaks'. Very cool. And MGMT have let slip a track from their coming album Congratulations. I fear that this is gonna be an album I'm gonna love to bash.
