DIRTY PROJECTORS “RISE ABOVE” DEAD OCEANS

Dirty Projectors, the unstoppably innovative, genre-bending band from Brooklyn, return with a new vision: Rise Above. The 11-song album is singer-composer Dave Longstreth’s ode to Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged, recreated mostly from memory—Longstreth was profoundly influenced by the album as an adolescent. To be clear, this is not a covers record, and it doesn’t sound anything like Black Flag. In fact, on Rise Above, Dirty Projectors sound simultaneously like Usher meets King Sunny Adé meets Soundgarden meets Bach. Part of Brooklyn’s new tradition of virtuosic musicians, Longstreth finger picks rapid guitar lines that sound straight out of Nigeria. Guitarist Amber Coffman and bassist Angel Deradoorian not only play complicated counterpoint to Longstreth’s guitar parts, but they sing complex harmonies, often ping-ponging vocal parts back and forth in a dizzying effect. They sound brilliantly robotic behind Longstreth, a front man known for his wild R&B vocal solos (check the positively crunk vocals on “No More”). It’s fascinating to hear Black Flag’s suburbia-influenced lyrics strewn upon a world-music-via-indie-rock canvas. Considering America’s stamp on the rest of the globe, it sounds downright futuristic; as Longstreth sings on “Police Story”: “Understand/we’re fighting a war/we can’t win/oh, they hate us/we hate them/we can’t win.”

Tags: black flag, dirty projectors