Wherein Dirty Projectors mastermind Dave Longstreth unites the nerds he’s polarized so effectively over the years. Retiring to a house in upstate New York for several months last year to workshop a mountain of new material, Longstreth hunkered down with just one, uncharacteristically simple concept in mind: write the best songs possible. He emerged with his finest work yet, an album that leaves the sidewinding R&B of 2009’s Bitte Orca for real, rope-a-dope troubadoubery — exhilarating gusts of Led Zeppelin-like guitar heroics (“Offspring Are Blank”), earthen acoustic balladry (the McCartney-indebted title track), and red-blooded poetry that’s both emotionally direct and, at times, utterly devastating (“Impregnable Question”). It proved once and for all that Longstreth was not all brains, but heart and soul, too. [Source]
New Music United 