christopher bundy

Serendipity led me to the guest list for The Dirty Projectors show at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta last night – a great venue in which I’d seriously see anything. But I had only planned to go to dinner. The show was a surprise but an easy decision.

I’d read of TDP and nice things about their music but had only heard one song and just hadn’t sat down to listen to them yet.

So, I didn’t know.

Maybe it’s the power of live music but these guys (and definitely gals) knocked me out last night. They are impossible to define easily or pigeonhole – a good thing these days. Weird, entirely unexpected and syncopated rhythms, stylistic variations, haunting harmonies, odd handclappings, and layers of sound. For some they might be a love or hate kind of sound – me, love it. Even my musically cynical friend who listens mostly to contemporary regional Mexican music dug what he heard last night.

The vocals (and those lovely harmonies) stand out – there were moments when the vocal force was like a pulse from a superhero’s hand or magic ring, a wave over the audience.

I came straight home after the show and bought their latest Swing Lo Magellan and can’t stop listening.

Check out this live performance of “Offspring are Blank,” off the new record.

Thanks, Nat, for the generous invite to a couple of strangers and a wonderful show.