Dirty Projectors

Defend Your Ballot: Caitlin White, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

Talibam! Is Proud to Be the Sixth Grade, Amateur Version of LMFAO

For a feature story this week we sat down with "no school" rap duo Talibam! to talk about their groovy, ass-spanking debut, Puff Up the Volume. The snazzy production team of MC K-Wizzle and MC Moaty Molguz played every instrument on the work, sans samples. You can also get a taste of them via their ... More >>

Live: Alvarius B Sings Songs Of Love And Spleen At Union Pool

Alvarius B w/Samara Lubelski and Marcia Bassett Duo Tuesday, September 4 Union Pool Better than: Getting drunk with your conspiracy-theory spewing uncle. Before his performance as the pseudonymous Alvarius B (with all the trippy venom that implies), former Sun City Girls member Alan Bishop chats p ... More >>

Live: Ava Luna Shake Off Their Nerves At The Mercury Lounge

Ava Luna w/Sinkane Mercury Lounge Saturday, August 11 Better than: Your run-of-the-mill, 4/4-time, block-chord buzz band. Ava Luna seems like one of those bands whose goal is to straight-up astound its audience. Though they would probably deny it vehemently for the record, the Brooklyn sextet can' ... More >>

Summer Music Guide: Death Grips' Disappearing Act

Download: Francis Harris's Swooning, Atmospheric "Pharoah In The Morning"

​Francis Harris is the given name of the Brooklynite who usually records as Adultnapper, the minimal techno icon who's punker upbringing leaves him never too afraid to get funky, cantankerous, mischievous or just plain noisy. His first full-length under his birthname (due February 7 via Scisso ... More >>

Download: Skeletons' Road Rage Rumination "More Than The One Thing"

Though originally birthed in Oberlin, Skeletons are a quintessential New York amalgam, guided by a fluttery art-jazz shimmer, a minimalist aesthetic, a grab bag of post-punk grooves and those disjunctive melodies currently turning the underground into a 12-tone headfuck (cf. Dirty Projectors, Tyond ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Five SOTC Critics Discuss.

Great song, at least​Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: myself, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. Let us acknowledge at the onset that we are ripping this off fr ... More >>

Giveaway: Five Pairs Of Tickets To See Phoenix At Madison Square Garden Next Week

​Oh, indeed. The gala Phoenix/Dirty Projectors/Wavves show hitting MSG Wednesday, October 20th is a big we-made-it moment for the maximalist, SOTC-beloved French pop-rockers; we think it'd be great if you got to see it in person. We have five pairs of tickets. And since is this is a bigger dea ... More >>

Live: Happy Birthday Go Rolling With The Fader at Brooklyn Bowl

​Happy Birthday's Kyle Thomas battles The Matrix. All photos by Georgia Kral.​Happy Birthday Brooklyn Bowl Tuesday, September 7 Better than: Actually bowling. Ever seen a show at Brooklyn Bowl? Ever seen a free show at Brooklyn Bowl, when many people are there with no interest in seein ... More >>

Phoenix Are Playing Madison Square Garden in October

​Here is the punchline to all those outraged tweets during Coachella, when people were shocked at that the crowd for Phoenix dwarfed that of indie-rock journeymen Pavement, who had the misfortune to go on at around the same time. Phoenix are a big deal in 2010: Their MySpace page brings news t ... More >>

I Don't Go Clubbing, I Go Dancing: The Weekend In Nightlife, Starring Solange, Peanut Butter Wolf, And The Martinez Brothers

​As hard as she tries to claim that she's not a hipster, Solange has been pretty consistent about proving otherwise. Never mind the palling around with the Dirty Projectors on- and offstage, or recording with Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes -- now the budding starlet has taken to DJing. Yes, DJing. ... More >>

This Weekend! James Maynard's Blood Into Wine, Reverend Horton Heat, Glee Live!, Holy Fuck, Nice Nice, Ninjasonik, So So Glos, Ava Luna, Bushick Rooftop Fest, And Much Much More

Tonight, the second viewing of Blood Into Wine, the documentary on Tool frontman James Maynard Keenan's brass-knuckled corkscrew domination of the Arizona winemaking frontier, aptly commences at the City Winery. Meanwhile, cowboy punk Reverend Horton Heat delivers his second sermon of "epically s ... More >>

Q&A: Solange Knowles On Why Working With Kevin Barnes "Makes All the Fucking Sense in The World"

"I don't want this façade of me diving into the indie scene - there's not a conscious effort to that at all." ​Back in '08, when Solange Knowles released her sophomore album, the daffy, Motown-checking Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, she sang "I'm no soul girl equipped with no afro." No ... More >>

Central Park SummerStage Finds A New Way To Avoid Antagonizing Its Neighbors: A $250,000 Soundsystem

The Dirty Projectors last summer, apparently pissing someone off royally. Pic by Abbey Braden.​Folks on Fifth Avenue apparently complained, so this summer, when Pavement finally arrives to play those shows you bought tickets for a half-year ago, a new quarter-million-dollar soundsystem will en ... More >>

This Weekend! Sleigh Bells, Broken Social Scene, Death Set, Ava Luna, Beauty Feast, Dinosaur Feathers, Jonsi w/ Nico Muhly, And Much Much More

Unless you regard yourself as a ticket-scalping monger, you must accept that a Friday roundup begins with four sadly inaccessible sold-out shows: Caribou, Sleigh Bells, Local Natives, and Broken Social Scene. Fortunately, this gives you the opportunity to revel in some well-earned "I'm on a Boat" ... More >>

Tonight! Andrew W.K. With Angel Deradoorian (She Of Dirty Projectors), Fester (He Of The Addams Family), And Peter Gabriel

​This is your Monday night: Choose from Andrew W.K., Fester from the Addams Family, and Peter Gabriel, a confluence slightly more random than M.I.A. provoking ginger genocide last week. At Santos Party House, W.K. and friends (including Angel Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors) are uniting for th ... More >>

Lollapalooza Lineup Announced in Full

​Featuring the odd return of 1995, in the persons of Soundgarden and Green Day, modern arena-rock surrogates the Strokes, Arcade Fire, MGMT, Phoenix, the National, and the Black Keys, and who else but Lady Gaga? Music is a befuddling tapestry in which Cypress Hill will always have a home. Comp ... More >>

Week in Review: I Sweat Nonsense

Ever feel like Sid Vicious is just kinda watching you? Photo by Sam Horine.​In the week we made Jay-Z's signature gas face at the bunch of hacks and pretenders posing as Guns N' Roses until dudes got the hell out of town, we also posted rants about everything from LMFAO not punching Mitt Romne ... More >>

Jerzify Your Favorite Indie Stars: Thom Yorke, Feist, Hipster Runoff, and More

Leslie "The Opportunity" Feist This isn't the dumbest way we've ever spent an hour in the workplace, but it's certainly up there. The most idiotically laughable meme of the past few days goes to Jerzify Yourself, the inevitable Jersey Shore personal-transformation site in the glute vein of such pop ... More >>

Week in Review: DIY Snitchin

We bleed for this thing. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week Jay-Z went all the way to the top of the singles list on our 2009 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll, the rapper told SOTC that his two favorite songs of last year both came from Kings of Leon. With an honorable mention tip of the cap to the ... More >>

Meet the One New York Musician Who's Never Heard a Dirty Projectors Record: Zemog El Gallo Bueno's Abraham Gomez-Delgado

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. Gomez-Delgado, lower middle. ​Zemog El Gallo Bueno is an audacious, spiked-wristband to the jaw of contemporary world music--hard-rocking, hard-arting, undeniably New York. Making what Peruvian-born, ... More >>

THE TWILIGHT HOUR

Don't forget your cardigan

Parsing the Record Sales of Pitchfork's Top 10 Albums of the Year

​Matthew Perpetua posts the numbers behind one of the more visible/influential year-end lists out--so what do they mean? Well, for one thing, the once and future Brooklyn triumvirate of Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, and Dirty Projectors really sold records. About 300K of them, to be exact-- ... More >>

Week in Review: Pull a Monster Out of Your Soul

Goodbye to all that, I guess. Photo of These Are Powers by Rebecca Smeyne.​In the week our F2K crew got within three wretched singles of revealing all 50 worst songs of the decade, we learned what giant, raging purple erections in cargo shorts would say if they could speak. (Probably something ... More >>

Week in Review: Like a Sexy Swedish Chick in a Natural Mineral Sauna

Yup, this photo was taken in 2009, by Rebecca Smeyne​In the week Chuck Schumer became a bike-riding, Williamsburg Pool Party-saving hipster man of the people, we roamed far and wide over his most precious borough, from an Obama Fried Chicken in Brownsville to the very likely defunct N8 to the ... More >>

Tonight! Javelin, Dylan, Big Star, The Dirty Projectors, And Air Waves

So here we have Rhode Island electro-rap duo Javelin, regaling MOMA patrons alongside some sort of anarchist dance collective with an 8-bit-sounding jam titled "Soda Popinski," named of course after one of the trickier adversaries in Mike Tyson's Punch Out; such a reference is all that's really re ... More >>

Week in Review: Or Whatever's Left of Her

Your guess is as good as ours. Photo by Nate "Igor" Smith​In the week we ran all over town looking for a headless pop star (and found her, hiding out in the Barnes and Noble Union Square magazine section), we also hailed the non-headless pop-stars-in-the-making Girls at their New York coronati ... More >>

Solange Knowles Covers the Dirty Projectors' "Stillness Is the Move"

Remember that time Solange and La La photographed themselves dancing to Animal Collective?​Alright, we give, we give: space r&b hero Solange Knowles covering the Dirty Projectors' spaced-out proto-r&b jam "Stillness Is the Move." Those wondering why her sister Beyonce and Jay-Z can be found th ... More >>

Best of NYC: Brooklyn Rocks!

We shouldn't have to tell you this, but we'll try

Live: Sufjan Stevens Soothes An Unsettled Bowery Ballroom

Sufjan Stevens Bowery Ballroom Monday, October 5 Chippy night down at the ol' Bowery. Heading downstairs we pass a heated argument between two hungry patrons and a bouncer defending the club's "all exits are final" policy. The men's bathroom is briefly closed due to unfortunate leakage; "hold it, ... More >>

Liturgy Are Somehow Playing the New Yorker Festival

​ The New Yorker Festival, the annual and upwardly-mobilely priced arts and culture series, has announced most of its 2009 line-up. The relevant, music-related graf in the press release: "Pop-music offerings will include interviews with and performances by Neko Case, Bon Iver, Steve Earle, an ... More >>

This Weekend! Ten Reasons Why You're Going to Siren Festival

You're going to the Siren Music Festival, and here's 10 reasons why: 1. Admission is free. 2. It's your last chance to catch Frightened Rabbit in New York this summer. Frontman Scott Hutchison, noted for slopping "filthy, twisted stuff on top of really quite polished bass," sings about dismembered ... More >>

Amazing Baby Release a Second Video for "Headdress," Which Showcases White Mice, a Llama, and a Caped Booby Witch

We've had plenty of time to get familiar with the Amazing Baby single "Headdress" since it was one of the four songs the Brooklyn band released as the free download EP Infinite Fucking Cross a little less than a year ago, around the time frontman Will Roan let us into his apartment. But despite Am ... More >>

Letters

The Black Eyed Peas Steamroll the Charts

The Black Eyed Peas, whose The E.N.D. is completely successful as a work of bonkers zeitgeist, if not as an actual record--although SOTC officially pretty much fucks with about 60% of it--sold an astonishing 304,000 copies its first week out. Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the Dirty Projector ... More >>

The Top 10 Records That Sold Last Week at Other Music in the East Village

In 2009, the traditional practice of exchanging physical copies of records for money is a trade that might best be called quixotic. But New Yorkers are stubborn people, and the record store is not dead. Below, the top ten records that actually sold in the last week at a store near you. Photo of Tak ... More >>

Week in Review: We Got Arrested at Your Benefit Show

In the short week that we outsourced absolutely nothing to India (not even the phoner we didn't do with the guy who plays trumpet for Cake), we got even less cosmopolitan and global when Cannes correspondent J. Hoberman came back and showed up at the office like the rest of us. Except, unlike him, w ... More >>

Stream 'Dark Was The Night' From Radio City

NPR is currently streaming the majority of May 3rd's Dark Was the Night concert, featuring the Dirty Projectors, David Byrne, Bon Iver, Feist, etc. This was the show that so moved Byrne that he later wrote it was "an exciting time" in music: "Maybe it's the headiness of being surrounded by so many c ... More >>

Whale-Watching With Björk

A fleeting glimpse of infinity at a surreal, 'star'-studded benefit show

This Week's Voice: Summer Arts Guide, Bjork and Dirty Projectors, Dan Graham's Whitney Retro, Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown, Cam'ron, Lit Seen, Summer Hours, and More

In this week's Village Voice, we unveil our 2009 Summer Arts Guide: Stacey Anderson on the constantly curious and enduringly romantic Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, Jed Lipinski on author Lawrence Osborne's delightfully vulgar Bangkok Days, Aaron Hillis in conversation with Surveillance director Jennif ... More >>

This Week in the Voice

In his previous mayoral campaigns, Mike Bloomberg has cut deals with Randi Weingarten's teachers' union that have eased his way to victory. But they also also stiffed charter schools and thwarted any hope of a real turnaround in our school system. Wayne Barrett tells us why this could be -- and sho ... More >>

Week in Review: Swine Flu False Alarm Total Panic Edition

In the week that we thought maybe we had swine flu, ran frightened from our offices, wandered the East Village for hours looking for wireless or a good doctor, and eventually received an email with the subject line "It's NOT Swine Flu," we sheepishly came back to our desks, only to find an army of c ... More >>

New Year's Eve 2009: New York Shows, Continued

New Year's Eve 2009, Continued

Vampire Weekend in the National League Playoffs?

Department of Eagles' In Ear Park: One Local Record To Be Excited About That's Not Dear Science

THE BUZZ

Catch this foursome before they go all Franz Ferdinand

Start the Presses

Searching for the cutting edge in DIY discourse, Todd P turns to . . . a print 'zine

No Context: The Dirty Projectors and the Lucky Dragons at the Whitney