Show Review: Dirty Projectors / Single Frame

Some friends of mine were visiting from CT this beautiful Memorial Day weekend and I thought I'd drag them to the Single Frame / Dirty Projectors show at Pianos.  I thought one of them would dig Single Frame and I thought one of them might dig Dirty Projectors.  The first act we saw was a guy on a laptop sitting in the middle of the floor with a circle of people around him.  It sounded like some monotonous noise to me and it's how I would imagine a cult meeting.  I have no idea what he was doing on his laptop, for all I know he could've been checking his gmail account.  He also would occassionally shreek into the microphone.  I tried getting it and at one point I tried meditating to it, but no dice.

Single Frame came on next and destroyed it.  I really liked the latest CD, but they were even more impressive live.  The drummer/lead vocalist was intense as he pounded the drums while also singing.  We have a review of their CD coming soon at Prefix, but you can check Pitchfork or somewhere else if you wanna see some nice words on them. The drummer also at one point banged away on a typewriter, which may sound like a gimmick but it worked real well.  They also had some nice visuals playing in the background.  They play Pianos again on Sunday (also playing in NYC on 6/1, 6/3, 6/9) and if I get my work done, I'll see them again.  My friend said they reminded him of Fugazi and I'd agree that there is definitely a Fugazi influence.  It blows my mind that these guys are playing a place as small as Pianos.  Nick Zinner also recently remixed their track "People Are Germs".

Listen to Single Frame's Body/End/Basement here.

Dirty Projectors were on next and the guy who was on the laptop earlier also was in this band.  That seemed like a bad sign, but this time he was equipped with a trombone.  After the first song my friends were ready to leave.  I told them to hang in there and I thought the show had it's moments, but I definitely preferred the album over the live show.  The disjointed parts and the abrasiveness of the songs off the album were too pronounced for me versus the album.  I still enjoyed the show though, but my friends were ready to kill me.  Look out for a review of the show by Theo Schell-Lambert coming soon at Prefix.  You can read his review of the album here.  You can also see Theo's work in the Village Voice lately although I only managed to dig up this older article.

Listen to Dirty Projectors MP3s here.