1. “Stillness Is The Move” (from Bitte Orca, 2009)
2. “Dance For You” (from Swing Lo Magellan, 2012) 3. “Useful Chamber” (from Bitte Orca, 2009)
4. “Fucked For Life” (from New Attitude, 2006)
5. “Gun Has No Trigger” (from Swing Lo Magellan, 2012)
6. “My Offwhite Flag” (from The Glad Fact, 2003)
7. “Depression” (from Rise Above, 2007)
8. “Two Doves” (from Bitte Orca, 2009)
9. “Tour Along The Potomac” (from The Getty Address, 2005)
10. “Because Your Light Is Turning Green” (from Slaves’ Graves & Ballads, 2004
The 10 Best Dirty Projectors Songs
When Dirty Projectors mastermind and bandleader Dave Longstreth sings about being “in the gray mesh shorts” of his alma mater, honestly, I freak out a little bit. When he croons, “I boogied down gargoyle streets, searching in every face for something I can believe,” my stomach burns. Every time I hear about how his “college smells like vomit,” I can’t help but laugh and nod.
I’d been listening to the Dirty Projectors well before I shared an alma mater with Longstreth — who famously dropped out of school to pursue his career in music — but being around campus and listening to his band’s catalog put things into an interesting perspective.
Because soon enough, at school, I found myself kicking around the gargoyle streets, running in gray mesh shorts, and throwing up in dorm stairwells myself. I took biology on the “science hill” in “Off Science Hill.” And for me, anyway, he was right — about everything.
Longstreth’s lyrics are littered with that kind of anxiety that would draw someone away from a set path: anxieties about death, and potential, and loneliness; yearnings for love, and success, and fire, and some sleep.
He was exactly right about feeling 21 and wanting to do something that probably won’t pay well. And the craziest thing is that he got me feeling those things before I even got to school.
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