At there best, EPs are half formed ideas, glimpses of where an artist has been and where she’s going next. About to Die is no exception to that rule, beginning with one of the standouts from this year’s Swing Lo Magellan, an album that while doing little to expand on the fan base Dirty Projectors generated with the unexpected success of 2009′s Bitte Orca, nevertheless demonstrated that the wit and creativity that has made these guys such darlings of the indie scene is far from exhausted.
“About to Die” is a perfect taste of Swing Lo Magellan, mixing a somewhat malevolent conceit with Dirty Projector’s trademark bouncy arrhythmia. It’s that mix that helped make the queasy “Gun Has No Trigger” such a gripping single,
“While You’re Here” is blanketed in an orchestral arrangement that begins in simple decrescendo before being chopped up along with David Longstreth’s cry of, ‘while you are here, you are alive.’ It’s a lyrical counterpoint to the title track, suggesting that the concern of this short player is the space between ‘about to die’ and ‘still alive,’ a liminal space tailored made for Dirty Projector’s distaste for certainty.
That theme builds with “Here Til it Says I’m Not,” a song that starts out in a whisper before detonating with a glossy, ‘Hey! Put your hands above your head where I can see!’ Longstreth seems to entreat us to celebrate, even as the music backing him is caught in the mud. On “Simple Request” these rolls are reversed, the melody desperately trying to rediscover the pop-infused energy of Bitte Orca while Longsteth’s voice moans from what seems like a million miles away.
The sense of this EP, then, is that the push-and-pull that has always characterized the rhythms of Dirty Projectors now seems to be affecting the broader character of the songs, tugging the mind behind them in different directions. While nothing much comes of it on About to Die, it’s easy to imagine that those contradictory impulses might result in a musical tearing apart, revealing something that we may never have expected. It’s a ballsy move to release an EP so soon after a well-received album, but with About to Die, Dirty Projector’s have captured our attention yet again, forcing us to wonder about what comes next, even while we’re still digesting what came before.
4 / 5 bars
