live – Dirty Projectors

Last night I made the right choice and headed down to the Bowery Ballroom to see one of my favorite bands in AMERICA, Dirty Projectors. I made the wrong choice however by going late and missing an opening set by solo artist Julianna Barwick. Classic.

I’ll admit, I did have my doubts as to how much I was going to enjoy seeing Dirty Projectors for the 3rd time since they started their current tour in August. But this ended up being a very different show then what I was used to. Obviously they have been receiving a certain amount of press recently since releasing Rise Above, and their non-stop marathon touring schedule has helped get the word out significantly. But I honestly did not expect to see them play to such a huge crowd in a larger then normal venue. This was also my very first time to the Bowery and I am happy to say I wasn’t let down. The sound was wonderfully on point, and visually it made sense to see this band on this sort of stage with loud cheers and applause to follow each song. These guys been working very hard in the past year or so and you could tell they were grateful for such a warm homecoming in New York.

Only downside of the evening was learning that Julianna Barwick was one of the opening bands and we had missed her early set. I read about her on Ma Fama a few weeks ago and sort of forgot to look her up. So when I came into work today I did a search on this thing called “google” and found some of her songs, then Yancey notified me that we actually have a website at this company I work for called “emusic.com” and I “downloaded” her album Sanguine. I’m going to go back in and give it a second listen, but my instincts tell me that it was a bad move to miss her live. Kind of sounds like Petra Haden and Panda Bear had a baby… I swore I’d never try to make snide / witty musical comparisons, but I just like that both their names start with P.