Dirty Projectors

Dirty Projectors

DOMINO. CD/DL/LP

Art rock meets R&B producing an over-egged new hybrid on eighth album. Dirty Projectors’ songs have always incorporated unexpected twists, and while this album is full of invention, Dave Longstreth, the group’s sole constant, has packed so much in that they are often fussy, fidgety and over-ornamented. Things start promisingly with the gospelly I See You, Longstreth’s voice at its most impressive when launching into space rather than being buffeted by cloying, showy backing vocal harmonies. The most overtly R&B-influenced songs are Cool Your Heart and Death Spiral, where the listener has to pick a way through the sonic pile-up of glitchy beats, bass synth slides, acoustic guitar, strings, frilly piano and rather oppressive vocodered and manipulated voices. On Keep Your Name, Longstreth’s voice is varispeeded to a grotesque, comic degree, from baritone to chipmunklike. For a break-up song it feels emotionally vacant and ends bathetically with a cartoonish chorus.