Last year Dirty Projectors released a tortured breakup album, Dirty Projectors, that chronicled the acrimonious 2016 split between band mastermind David Longstreth and singer-guitarist Amber Coffman. Its heavy-handed retelling was from Longstreth’s point of view, since Coffman had quit the group—joining Angel Deradoorian and Olga Bell on the list of crucial members who’ve left Dirty Projectors since 2012.
Most of the songs feature vocal cameos, from folks as disparate as the sisters in Haim, Odd Future’s Syd, and the team of Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend). They pair effervescent harmonies with Longstreth’s syllable-crammed phrasing on the earnest folk-flavored opener, “Right Now,” and the early-80s Michael Jackson homage “I Feel Energy,” which stokes its ebullience with compressed horns. Longstreth’s music often feels calculated and schematic—his perfectionism, ambition, and outsize technical ability can overwhelm the more universally human qualities in his work. But I’ve been listening to the tunes on Lamp Lit Prose for a week now, and they’ve not only opened up to me but also opened me up—the opposite effect as the previous album.
