at the Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Ave. (at 75th Street) whitney.org
Fans check out the Dirty Projectors set from both the museum's cafe and garden--with Janis Joplin's psychedelically-adorned Porsche parked in the background (far right)
Against the backdrop of Janis Joplin's 1965 Porsche Cabriolet Super C, anything seemed possible. Maybe the aura cast by that magnificent psychedelic car was at least partly responsible for the success of what, at first, seemed to be a dubious offering in the midst of New York's summer concert season.
Dirty Projectors and Lucky Dragons (aka Luke Fischbeck) performed in the Whitney's cafe area, mere feet from Joplin's Porsche. And while it remains questionable whether either band are truly the progeny of psychedelic music (as opposed to, say, Kula Shaker, Super Furry Animals, or Comets on Fire), the crowd of brimming-with-irony hipsters displayed actual enthusiasm for the Projectors' meticulous pop and even Lucky Dragons' brand of musical performance art.
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Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth, flanked by vocalist/guitarist Amber Coffman, delighted the crowd at the Whitney with meticulous compositions and tight arrangements
Dirty Projectors' Brian McOmber on drums and Angel Deradoorian on bass and vocals
Dirty Projectors is the brainchild of Yale dropout Dave Longstreth, who now has six LPs under his belt. The latest, which comprised the band's set at the Whitney, is called "Rise Above" (due for release on Sept. 11, 2007 on the Dead Oceans label) and was Longstreth's attempt to rewrite the landmark 1981 Black Flag album "Damaged" from memory.
It would be easy to assume from this fact that Dirty Projectors are all gimmick and little substance, but this isn't the case. They are blessed with many things, such as an amazing drummer in Brian McOmber and two stunning female vocalists, Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian--who accompany Longstreth as well as play guitar and bass respectively. Live, Dirty Projectors exude a vibrant, melodic abundance, but still manage to rock pretty hard--though they seem to be a far cry from Black Flag's hardcore punk sensibilities. (In the words of one audience member, "This is so unlike Black Flag, it's ridiculous.")
But gimmicky they are not. Longstreth's oft-bewildered facial expression belies an evident grasp on his musical vision, which combines meticulously composed songwriting and tight musicianship, as well as three fantastic singers who are confident in the unabashed goodness of their voices and quality of their harmonies. Their overall aesthetic is melodic, intricately layered, multi-part pop music.
Lucky Dragons (aka Luke Fishbeck) started out his set in bizarre fashion, humping various pedals and chewing on cords, somewhat alienating some conservative audience members
Halfway through the show, Fishbeck began to engage the audience, handing out multicolored wires to the crowd
Soon, the audience was entirely engaged, touching each other on the arms and shoulders to generate an ever-evolving electronic soundscape
Though it's hard not to like Dirty Projectors, that's not so with one-man show Lucky Dragons. By turns pretentiously self-indulgent and disarmingly innocent, Lucky Dragons' Luke Fishbeck managed to captivate his audience during the second half of his set--a truly remarkable feat after having so successfully alienated them at the beginning.
Lucky Dragons is best understood as a musical performance artist, with Fischbeck performing to pre-recorded, but electronically controlled, music against a backdrop of self-created psychedelic projections. The music is an electronic pastiche of beats and ambient melodies that morph into one another, pleasant but not groundbreaking.
It's what Fischbeck does when he's performing that makes Lucky Dragons so memorable. He spent the first half of his set humping guitar pedals, shoving audio cables down his pants and making love to microphones, in an unsubtle attempt to demonstrate the visceral quality of music. His gyrating hips, blank expression and self-consciously hideous haircut had his audience smirking, staring off into space or, in some cases, reading.
But then something happened.
Fischbeck started making eye contact. He started smiling and talking to his audience. The ambient music played on as Fischbeck convinced audience members, one by one, to pick up multicolored cables (doubling as musical control units) that he passed around. People stopped smirking, they stopped reading and they started to get it. The audience began touching each other, on their arms and shoulders. And then, what had initially seemed so affected became a shared experience--the music really did become visceral and the audience really did experience both the public and private sides of art.
Before Dirty Projectors ever took the stage, Lucky Dragons succeeded in persuading a roomful of cynics to set aside their irony and very literally connect with the cables, equipment, music, performer and each other. Isn't that music at its best? myspace.com/luckydragons hawksandsparrows.org
