Consumer Guide Album

The Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca [Domino, 2009]
Yale music major David Longstreth greets his well-distributed new label, in timing I'm sure is sheer coincidence, with nine striking songs that are recognizable as such. Not only will you hum snatches, you'll parse lyrical bits, too: a basement-dwelling twentysomething high on Gatorade in an underpopulated housing development, a waitressing job for Solange Knowles. Jumpy and off-kilter harmonically and structurally, such songs would have seemed more suitable to a concert hall than a rock club 10 years ago. But those were such crude times. Only a boor like me would wonder why the hocketing purity of the voices and the parts-not-grooves of the drums approach the music's user-friendly amenities from a higher plane. B+