As if there wasn’t enough excitement around the initial lineup for this year’s installment of Pygmalion Music Festival, hold onto your seats indie armchair critics. We’re always proud to have this sort of privilege in unveiling announcements like this, and Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors are officially slated to perform at this year’s festival. This group is the epitome of a buzz band, so we’re going to make some additons to that buzz ourselves — we hope you don’t mind.
This band has been around the world and back since the release of 2009’s critically-acclaimed Bitte Orca. Granted, this was the one that really put them on the map, regardless of what records they had previously released. Their past efforts were good in their own right, but there wasn’t anything quite like what Bitte Orca brought to the table.
I recall listening to it for the first time — and I’ll be the first to admit that it was after seeing it score a 9.2 on Pitchfork, and saying to myself, “Who are the Dirty Projectors?” Yeah, I was one of those people. Big deal. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. Bitte Orca wasn’t something I could grab after first listen. At least in my experience it wasn’t. Ingesting something like Bitte on first listen isn’t an easy task — it’s definitely a tough pill to swallow.
With all the quirks, insane harmonies, and unorthodox progressions and time changes throughout their tracks, it was something that took a few spins to really make sense. Many times I’ve thought, “How much weirder can this get?” It’s really an interesting part about this band, because even though they are unconventional and eccentric, they still have all of the tools to make up a pretty great indie band. Listening to their music at times is like a rubber band being stretched so tight it’s about to snap, but then everything falls into place just the way they wanted it to. Just the right amount of tension in music keeps listeners guessing.
If you’re not convinced that this is the case, go back and listen to their previous records before Bitte to get a real taste of what this band is about. There’s a wide variety and serious texture to those recordings as well, even if it wasn’t what put them on the map.
Enough about the past or their last album though, we have the future to look forward to. What other buzz can we create through this? The next record Swing Lo Magellan (check out their website for the enormous picture of some confusing Instragram cover art) is on its way in July, and everyone and anyone will have something to say about it. There’s a possibility that this will be a Krannert Center show (they’ve presented shows in the past by Andrew Bird, Yo La Tengo, Iron & Wine, Roky Erickson with Okkervil River, and Explosions in the Sky), held outside in Downtown Urbana, with the location still TBD. Needless to say, there are some serious indie staples that will certainly bring it at Pygmalion this year, and as always, more additions to come.
Dirty Projectors join Pygmalion Music Festival’s bill which features Grizzly Bear, Dinosaur Jr., Cloud Nothings, Tennis, Lotus Plaza, Frankie Rose, Willis Earl Beal, Owen and many more, happening September 27-29, 2012 all around C-U.
