Dirty Projectors, Dirty Projectors

★★☆☆☆

Download: Up In Hudson; Ascent Through Clouds

What is it with musicians and their need to air their laundry in public? Barely a week goes by without another break-up album laying out the tedious details of another failed relationship. Dirty Projectors is the latest, David Longstreth’s account of his separation from former bandmate Amber Coffman told through a

welter of auto-tuned, over-treated vocals and jumble of clashing sounds that, to be generous, may be intended as an analogue of the ground shifting beneath their disintegrating relationship.

It’s not a pretty portrait, with her face depicted as “a rictus of misery and pain”, and their contrasting attitudes somewhat self-servingly described by “Your heart is saying ‘clothing line’/My body said Naomi Klein/No logo”. Ironically, the most approachable piece is “Up In Hudson”, Longstreth’s reminiscence of their early time together, a sunnier memory opening with warm horns and climaxing in a glorious thread of keening guitar distortion. It’s the one track here that might survive the nakedness of simple, solo accompaniment.