The Glad Fact

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.