Album Review: Dirty Projectors' 'Swing Lo Magellan'

A genuine admission or an insider’s feint, the morsel of studio chatter reflects the way Dirty Projectors move between art-school ambition and pop-song utility on “Swing Lo Magellan.” It’s a cake-and-eat-it-too record whose beautiful melodies (“Just from Chevron”) and sumptuous grooves (“Offspring Are Blank”) rarely arrive without some probing self-examination. “With our songs we are outlaws,” Longstreth sings in the tender rockabilly ballad “Irresponsible Tune”; in “About to Die” the band keeps knocking a loping rhythm off-balance, as though anxious about its value on the dance floor.

Like 2009’s breakthrough “Bitte Orca” (which spawned the underground semi-hit “Stillness Is the Move”), “Swing Lo Magellan” feels as inspired by big-ticket R&B as by cultish guitar music: You could envision Cee Lo Green bellying his way through “Gun Has No Trigger.” But Dirty Projectors still get itchy at the prospect of sleek surfaces, and their uneasiness is a thrill to behold.

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