TUNES OF THE DECADE: #31 'STILLNESS IS THE MOVE' BY DIRTY PROJECTORS

Regular Grain visitors will have noticed a strong vein of pro-Americanism running through many of our articles. This is partly an attempt to challenge some of the anti-Yank prejudices of the past fifteen years; in the mid-nineties, Britpop sought to reject US influence, dedicating itself to a caricatured, marketable summary of musical ‘Englishness’. In many ways we Brits still haven’t really recovered from this swing towards insularity.

Our alternative sector (if you can still call it that) is in a pretty bad way, and it seems obvious that we’ll have to follow America’s example in this time of ideological and creative renewal. Just as we’re all looking to Obama for political inspiration, those of us with left-leaning musical sympathies will have to look states-wards for suggestions on how to proceed. TVOTR, Animal Collective, and Grizzly Bear are only the most notable representatives of an American independent scene that is, perhaps for the first time ever, absolutely unequivocally preferable to its British equivalent (a musical landscape populated largely by flash-in-the-pan Topshop-indie mediocrities like The Klaxons, Foals, La Roux, Florence and the Machine etc. And these lot are actually a cut above the NME–endorsed mainstream of UK indie – monstrosities like Kasabian, White Lies, and ‘honorary Brits’ Kings of Leon).

Over on this side of the Atlantic, there is a significant minority of praiseworthy outliers – The Invisible, Wild Beasts, the various incarnations of the Field Music stable, Findo Gask, Max Tundra, Danananakroyd (and we at The Grain are dedicated to seeking out and championing these sorts of artists). But these are incongruous, marginal voices, unlikely to survive long-term in this climate without impregnable internal reserves of oppositional spirit and integrity; exceptions to the new rule, without a natural habitat in which to flourish. In time, with luck, a solid new underground infrastructure will materialize, but at the moment we are some way from this becoming a reality – our interesting artists left with little choice but to go ‘pop’ very quickly or face a lonely extinction (‘indie-pop’, ‘art-pop’, ‘wonky-pop’ – spurious alibis all).

DIRTY PROJECTORS 'STILLNESS IS THE MOVE' VIDEO

The Grain brings you the Dirty Projectors new video for ‘Stillness is the Move’ purely for your viewing pleasure, complete with a dance routine any RnB diva would be proud of.

Then read our thoughts on Bitte Orca here . . . it makes sense and you know it.

SAY GOODBYE TO POST-BRITPOP PASTICHE, HELLO TO DIRTY PROJECTORS’ BITTE ORCA AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILISATION

I don’t know what ‘bitte orca’ means, and I must say that I’m also having a similar problem in trying to work out what the hell the new Dirty Projectors’ album of the same name is all about. Just where on earth does this insane, art-pop-neo-folk-chamber-rock-minimalist-afro-r’n’b odyssey fit into the scheme of things? There’s Kasabian, and then there’s Dirty Projectors. What kind of fucked-up logic is at work in a world that presents us with such radical contrasts in artistic worth? Did the same God who made West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum make Bitte Orca?

I think not, and in actual fact it’s not really all that difficult to position this latest offering from Dave Longstreth and co, to realize that Bitte Orca is so obviously and emphatically what the world needs right now. Even if large swathes of the western population don’t know it yet (notably most of our fellow citizens here in the UK) we’re surely now coming to the end of the great nostalgic postmodernist joke that got out of hand. This was a chapter of our cultural history which began in earnest in the mid-nineties with the arrival of the devout pastiche-driven retrogressiveness of Britpop, and subsequently deepened into a bewildered and backward-looking decade-and-a-half that saw just about every stylistic movement of the late-twentieth century pillaged and travestied in superficial principle-less fashion, until every shred of futurism and vitality was squeezed out of a once noble, radical and meaningful alternative/independent scene.

We’re now at a juncture where many people who really should know better genuinely think the future of British music lies in the hands of a slickly-marketed, fashion supplement-courting Kylie Minogue knock-off. So friends, I’m afraid it’s time to for us to choose sides. Will we carry on down the path of music-as-lifestyle, of shallow ironic referencing of past cultural (non-)glories, of dumbing-down, of pop music as commercial sell-out rather than populist art? Or will we side with the Dirty Projectors’ exhilarating, intelligent, experimentalist vision of what twenty-first century music can amount to if underwritten with a bit of idealism, bravery and (dare I say it) pretentiousness?

Listen to Bitte Orca, and the decision should be immediate and conscious-bypassing. The album opens with a series of evocatively filtered late-period-Beatles guitar strums and, from here on in, its becomes evident that the DPs have finally managed to pitch the art/pop quota just right; in doing so they might just have elevated themselves to the position of standout creative role models for a newly forward-thinking musical generation. Everyone should have heard by now about the laugh-out-loud total freaking genius of lead single ‘Stillness is the Move’, that seems to suggest a perfect synthesis of post-Timbaland r’n’b pop and leftfield adventurousness, while sounding so effortlessly instantaneous and physically joyous as to literally knock the breath out of you the first time you hear it.