The Albums of 2012 (#7): Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan (Domino)

Much of the initial critical response to Swing Lo Magellan, the sixth album from this precociously talented Brooklyn sextet, focused upon the record’s relatively accessible character. In contrast to the fractured, mercurial brilliance of 2009’s Bitte Orca, Magellan was striking in its sonic and emotional evenness; a quality which suggested a new reflectiveness and maturity in Dave Longstreth’s songwriting. Where Orca’s hyperactive contortions displayed an ostentatious determination to dazzle the listener, Magellan was content to use the Projectors’ now-familiar palette with a more subtle, quiet confidence.
 
The gentle acoustic strumming, stripped-back sound and orthodox structure of the title track represents the clearest example of this new understatedness, but it’s also evident in songs like Gun Has No Trigger, which is content to use the backing vocals of Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle and Olga Bell in a relatively softened and repetitive way. The core ingredients of the Projectors’ sound remain in evidence – afrobeat-inflected guitarwork, hauntingly strange and incisive vocals, and a prog-like ambition in terms of structure and dynamics – but the pyrotechnic shifts in tempo and volume occur less frequently here. When they do, however – as on the stoner-style burly riffage of opener Offspring Are Blank – the effect is all the more impressive.
 
The sense of Magellan’s separateness, however, now feels less pronounced. The record may have an unfamiliar concision and quietude, but the sheer oddness of the band’s musical palette, and the audacious inventiveness of their vision, are still present. It’s those elements, fundamentally, which make this album every bit as thrilling and distinctive as Orca, and the two records now feel like companion pieces. That point was confirmed at their triumphant Arches show in October, which meshed together material from the two LPs with seamless virtuosity. Swing Lo Magellan may be accessible, but it’s no less remarkable for that.