Listen: Dirty Projectors' new self-titled album drops early
by Robin Hilton
February 22, 2017
Dirty Projectors frontman David Longstreth decided he couldn't wait any longer. In a Twitter post yesterday, the singer said it had been "four years, seven months and 11 days" since the band's last album, which was "long enough!" Longstreth live-streamed the entire new record, playing it from a turntable, on the Dirty Projectors Facebook page. It's since been made available from both Apple Music and Spotify.
Longstreth calls Dirty Projectors a breakup album, a series of cathartic songs largely informed by his breakup with longtime band member and singer Amber Coffman. Longstreth bared this acute heartache, singing about loss and profound sadness, on two previously released songs and videos from Dirty Projectors: "Keep Your Name" and "Little Bubble."
In a press release announcing the new record earlier this year, Longstreth says he bottomed out emotionally after Dirty Projectors headlined Carnegie Hall in 2013 for the band's last full-length, Swing Lo Magellan. "I was pretty torn up," he says of that time, "pretty effing depressed." As he battled heartache, depression and writer's block, Longstreth says he couldn't see a future for the band. Over the next several years he focused on other people's projects instead; He scored the strings for Joanna Newsom's Divers album, worked with Rhianna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney on the song "FourFiveSeconds," and even produced and co-wrote Amber Coffman's upcoming solo album, City Of No Reply.
Longstreth eventually connected with producer Rick Rubin who convinced him to release another Dirty Projectors album, telling Longstreth he should keep the band's name.
While Coffman obviously isn't on the new album, Longstreth does collaborate with a large cast of other artists, including Solange, who co-wrote a track called "Cool Your Heart," Dawn Richards, Tyondai Braxton and yMusic.
Dirty Projectors was originally due out this Friday on Domino Records.
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Resources
Dirty Projectors - official site