Dirty Projectors: Lamp Lit Prose review – Half-baked hipster garbage

Lamp Lit Prose
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Artist: Dirty Projectors
Genre: Alternative
Label: Domino

Dirty Projectors have been polarising opinion since 2002 with an experimental brand of indie rock that is loved and loathed in equal measure. Alternative-leaning audiences have either lapped up their idiosyncratic quirky pop or run in horror. They still embody a certain breed of Pitchfork endorsed preppy coolness that contends that Brooklyn is the undisputed centre of the known universe.

Lamp Lit Prose is crammed with ideas, which vary wildly from the slightly okay to the awfully bad and the downright ugly. The opening track features Syd, of contemporary R&B sensations The Internet, only intoning the word "now" in rising harmonies, which is mildly interesting and terribly infuriating all at the same time. Last year Dirty Projectors released an eponymous album with an all-new line-up bar their only constant member, David Longstreth, who had split up with long-term girlfriend and collaborator Amber Coffman, who alongside Angel Deradoorian gave the band some sorely needed substance and bite in their early years.

Now it is essentially a Longstreth solo project with a revolving-door line-up, trotting out half-baked hipster garbage. For example, the bafflingly bad Blue Bird is probably the worst song I've heard this year. Overall, Dirty Projectors come across an overrated early noughties outfit well past their sell-by date.