The Dirty Projectors Will Get You Through the Winter
This song, via Stereogum, is blowing my mind. Since “acquiring” the song on the 15th — I fully intend to buy the compilation when it is released, my friends — I’ve listened to it over 120 times. I think I passed the 80 mark on the second day. This isn’t a good thing. Rather, it reflects a deep mental itch that clearly needed to be scratched. “Knotty Pine” is a Dirty Projectors collaboration with David Byrne, so perhaps it’s not all that surprising that it has melted my brain and face. Byrne wrote the lyrics, which are quite beautiful:
This is the sound a phonograph makes
When I see them, when I hear them
I see visions of sharp precision
Overabundance, overindulgence
Tied together with rope and twine
Stuck together with paste and glue
Two old planks of knotty pine
And a couple of nails
Poked right on through
Honestly, I could be completely wrong about the lyrics. I hope not. The singing is charmingly incomprehensible, but I am sensing some deep significance to these words. Doesn’t this sound like the kind of thing you’d like to hear at your wedding? Unless, that is, you intend to have a Genghis Khan style wedding, in which you, acting as a horse thief, snatch your bride from a neighboring camp on the basis of who has the “strongest legs.” But even then you could play this song from the Ghetto Blaster attached to your knapsack. Problem solved!
I’ve been led to understand that Dave Longstreth is an intolerable tyrant. My guess is that some degree of pigheadedness is necessary to realizing Longstreth’s singular genius. I’m a little taken with the two chanteuses in the band, Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian. But really, who isn’t?
Actually, I’m feeling very open-hearted. Apart from “Knotty Pine,” I’ve been listening to a lot of R. Kelly, particularly his celebrated collaboration with Usher, “Same Girl.” You might say that Republicans and Democrats are in love with the “same girl.” No, she doesn’t have a crib on P Street, and she does not work for TBS. Rather, she is the American electorate. My sincere hope is that no other nation has a photograph of America wearing “boy shorts” on its cell phone. That would represent a collective trauma that I don’t think we could bear in this economic climate.
I have a lot of Firefox tabs to knock out. Expect more blogging.