The Glad Fact (CD)
The Dirty Projectors' debut album, The Glad Fact, dwells in the sorts of emotional ambiguities and contradictions that have always tortured the sensitive ones. Each song offers a new melody that seems to have been sent from some erratic and beautiful netherworld. The music is many things at once: sophisticated and heartfelt, tender and aggressive, pleasing and miserly in its refusal to please. Longstreth's songs possess a will to surprise and deceive that constantly defies our expectation of musical--and emotional--resolution. The songs' brokenness is their resolution, and their most beautiful part. And I guess a cover with a penis on it is supposed to be funny.