Switched on Pop - How Dirty Projectors Make You Feel Energy (with David Longstreth)

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

Dirty Projectors are known for their kaleidoscopic soundscapes. They make strange bedfellows of music techniques like 14th vocal harmonies and African guitar rhythms. But in the backdrop of their obscure orchestrations you will hear the indelible marks of pop music. Longstreth has recently collaborated on songs with Solange, Rihanna, Kanye and Paul McCartney. On his new track "I Feel Energy" we can hear that pop influence shine through. Together we break down his unpredictable 808s to see what gives you energy. We also build connections between Dirty Projectors and other artists in the top 100 including Marshmello, Ella Mai and Khalid. Songs Featured:Dirty Projectors - I Feel EnergyDirty Projectors - Up In HudsonMarshmello ft. Bastille - HappierElla Mai - TripKhalid - Better Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdon Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. We're very excited about our guest. Do you mind introducing yourself? Sure. I'm Dave from Dirty Projectors. Dave, thanks for being here. It's very exciting. Thanks for having me. So what we're going to do today is we're going to break down your track.

I feel energy off of your new album, Lamplit Pros. It is, in short, extremely energetic. Yes. It's extremely fun. And what I want to do is I want to look at what are the ingredients that make someone feel energy through music. You do it really well on this song. The second half we're going to look at is this dirty projector song, which might be known for being

angular or indie or out there. Actually, a pop song in disguise. Yes. Spoiler. Yeah, wow. That was no suspense there. I didn't know which it was going to be. So to kick things off, we should listen to the song because we want to get in our ears.

Are we fundamentally alone in the universe? What would it possibly mean if we're found in each other? Beautiful. Yeah. This is like what I think of as an alarm clock song. Like, you know, if you have a clock radio and you can program it to play a certain song when you wake up, this is like something that will get you out of bed. All through high school, I listened to James Brown's get up off of that thing in the morning.

But this would be like a good substitute, I think. That's awesome. Dave, I want to get into what the ingredients are of the ecstatic energy that is being created here. But before we do, would you share a bit about where this song came from? It's one of those songs that's just sort of coalesced, less of a decisive moment of like, oh, great, here's the verse. It was more like a collection of things that came together. So it was sort of collaged from different snippets of melody and harmony? Yeah, totally.

Interesting. Totally. Yeah, the bridge is probably the first part and just that kind of like crazy chord progression, which I didn't really like realize at first was a bridge. I was like, oh, in that it feels sort of like wandering and vaguely modulatory, this would be a good bridge. And then how long-winded the bridge was made me want to do something super static in the rest of the song. I think oftentimes like left to my own devices,

for whatever, I don't know why this is, but I won't do the thing of just like four chords and like finding different ways of approaching that. You know, I like to write these melodies that are harmonized differently over the course of a whatever 16 bar phrase or whatever. So it felt like a cool challenge here to be like, all right, like, what if it's just four chords? And I guess it's actually six chords. But basically, you know.

Sure. So for me, the first ingredient that really stuck out was the rhythm because you opened the song with this utterly confusing and exciting and overjoyed drum. Yeah, that. Okay. That was eerily accurate. So what I wanted to do, this thing totally beguiled me. I couldn't figure out what you were doing when I listened to this. When I heard the hook, I was like, hook works.

I'm having fun. I'm listening. I'm dancing. I got energy. But then when I like really zoomed in and listened closely to what was going on, I got more confused, which is kind of an amazing. That's cool. It's an amazing thing.

Like, on first listen, it's great. On second listen, what? And so I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out what is it that makes this hook of the 808 baseline so compelling. What I wanted to do was listen to this rhythm. And I want to sort of deconstruct it into its individual parts. and see how that, what was going on through your wild mind, put this thing together. So let's listen to the sequence from the opening of the track.

I do love that. That one, like drums were my first instrument and just practicing things, like doing the classic, but do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Practicing that, like, over and over again. Oh, like a paradigil almost. Just like the fill of the, you know, the two rack tombs and the four, around the horn. Yeah, around the horn, exactly.

And so I meant that to be kind of like a, just like a joke on that whole idea. Like, this is a funny way to start. But then, yeah, mixing like a triplet thing into it. Yeah, and you've got people talking in the background. It kind of has this live field. It's fun right there. But I want to zoom in on the part immediately after the fill.

So let's listen to this one we're time. So the first thing I caught was that, well, I had to take this and I had to reduce it down to it. Let's just like just get the bass. And so you're using an 808 here of some kind, it sounds like. And so we took the 808, we isolated it. And the first thing that I picked up on here was that there seemed to be, I heard, an initial motif that gets reused. I think there's times when you sort of reduce this riff down to just sort of elemental parts of it and other parts where you extend it and make it bigger.

And it goes on and on and on in unpredictable ways. But the thing that sort of felt like the nugget, the motif, was just the introduction part. Yeah. Just that, right? Like, I think like a lot of pop producers could take that and go, but-da-d-dum-bum-bum-b. And just keep doing it. And you got a good loop, and that would have been a fun song. It seemed like this was not sufficient for you. Maybe not, yeah. Well, okay, actually, the first layer of the rhythm that I made was the bottles. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And there's a little bit of a backstory there, which is that when I was mixing the cell. titled record from 2017 with Jimmy Douglas. There was a song on that record. Wait, how am I blanking what song? Oh, it's up in Hudson from the self-titled record. And we were mixing it, and like I felt so bad for him bringing that album to him because it was this thing of like, I've been working on this for months. It's a hundred and fifteen tracks, mix. sit, you know. And so he spent a lot of time just sort of going through figuring out what various subgroups were and tracks were. And I remember as we were doing that with Up in Hudson, he soloed out this bottle pattern that was actually played by Morrow Rofosco. It was like an amazing

my favorite. Four in the dark, yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow, you're ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I've played with Morrow. Yeah. We can get into that later, but he's amazing. Morrow is incredible. But anyway, so Jimmy soloed this out, and he was just listening to this. And in the most amazing way, Jimmy, I think, was sort of skeptical of some of the more, like, deconstructing impulses that I had on that album. And so, I don't know, something he said about the bottles just stuck in my mind where he was like, that feels so good. He was just like, somebody's going to sample that and make a song out of that. So you sample yourself. Yeah.

So I was like, a couple of things. months later, I was like sitting in the studio. I'm going to take the bottles. And so I had that. And yeah, so I was just playing around with like 808s. Maybe I was actually trying to reclaim the deconstruction because I liked that. Just four or five, one. And then I was like, you know, I just wanted to keep on going and make something, I don't know, that felt like that you could ride in, but you were also just like, wait, what exactly? You know, where it came back around at a point where you go, oh. Yeah. And then, you know, it allowed you to move in a different way than just something a little more like normative, maybe would. Right. As we're talking about it, I was not thinking

about this. And in just, you know, you know how it is. In general, you're not like, yeah, thinking about like these things. But yeah, we actually, we had a listener who wanted to specifically ask you how much are you thinking about like theory and composition versus intuition? Not at, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what key, a lot of my songs are in, which is funny when we're rehearsing it. Kristen will be like, is this in B-flat? I thought it was in B-Flat? I thought it was in G.

But I think I had read the Philip Glass memoir. Cool. Words Without Muser. And he was talking about, like, mixing his, like, you know, like Nadia Boulanger training with the transcription that he was doing for Ravichenko. and he was talking about these different approaches to rhythm and the Indian music of like additive rhythm where you're taking these like sort of rhythmic cells

and just you know stringing them together that's kind of what happened here okay so and so you basically you had this funky little bottle rhythm you needed some 808s and you're putting a sort of inspired Indian rhythm over these eight with the 808s again wasn't thinking of it that way but yeah maybe I just felt like where the one is and where, you know, the rhythmic integrity of the bottles is so abundant that to destabilize it a little bit with the 808, it felt like. Yeah, because it's coming

in on all sorts of strange places. So I wanted to just, for listeners to help them understand what's going on here, I wanted to walk through sort of each piece of this rhythm. It took me doing so to like finally get my head around it. Okay. And in some ways, like, the song is great because I couldn't get my head around it, right? It's almost like, it just, demands you to dance around it and sort of find your place and then come back. And I like that it does that. But I'm infinitely analytical and I had to understand what was pulls off. So just going back to that, to the riff one more time, so it's in our ear. Beautiful. And this is not the only, this is not the only, it's not a loop that goes through the song. It goes through all sorts of permutations. It changes.

But I found this rhythm to be the motif. So you give us that the first time. Yep, yep. The next time, you kind of extrapolate on it. You go high this time. you give us an extra little little judge right there and then you take this and you use a tool called rhythmic displacement

where you take the same idea but you place it on different rhythms within the bar so the that thing we're going to hear multiple times coming in in different places surprising

and just to throw us off a little bit at the very end you kind of back to the main motif, but it jumps in a place you don't expect. Right. So if we listen to the original, the motif, and we listen to the ending, you surprise us. Things jump in just a little quicker. Oh, God, it throws you off your feet.

And then, so we could put those all back together and we can hear them in context again. I can't sing it back for you. I don't have that rhythm. But one of the things that amazes me is you then take this and it just goes through so many different permutations. So that my ear is always surprised. And this is why I think the rhythm is just an essential part of the ingredients

for energy is, I think ecstaticism comes from this overjoyed sense, but with unpredictability. And there's so much unpredictability in how you manage this riff. And so later on, I think when we get perhaps later and into the verse, you bring it back,

but not only do you have this rhythmic displacement where you take that motif and you sort of move it around the bar, you actually start to introduce some new notes using basically melodic sequences where it's a similar sort of thing, but you're changing it. So here is what we hear later on in the verse. It's mad, man. So it's always familiar but never quite the same.

Is that the idea? That's what I'm catching. Cool. What's going on your mind? It seems like this is a big part of the intent as you're going into the song. Yeah. Or the intuition.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a flow, you know. I mean, you have the approximate feeling of it, even if you can't quite sing it. Because underneath there is kind of that core, but a dumb, bum, like it's in there, but it's always moving around and it's never just exactly where you think it's going to be until you come back around and then, you know, at the end of that section, maybe in the next section you get, you're back on the beat. Or are you expected to be? Yeah. Just the specific feel of where those land in a kind of like grid of four, if you're internalizing that. I just like there's momentum there. There's momentum there. There's, there's, to me, it's just, it's less about, I mean, you know, I love to break things down and think about how they work, why they were in, and all that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, yeah, I mean, for me, it was just sort of like, this, this moves, you know. And what people don't get to see is your extraordinary dancing. Yeah. For those listening at home, it's like, kind of like funky head bobbing, but with sort of a quizzical expression, it's like, making me move, but I don't know why. So I had some other ingredients that for me was really bringing out the energy of the track. And an obvious place where a lot of people start is in lyric.

And I think there's an almost seemingly contradictory thing happening with the lyric, which is that in the verses, it's pretty down. Right? And of course, the chorus is extremely up. And for me, the clash of these two, not only is it sort of for me, the central message that I get from the song. but the contrast is what makes the highs feel so much higher. So what I want to do is just play for folks the second verse where it's pretty clear we're in a low spot. I wish when I was blue that I could sing with that much joy.

There's this really fun, like there's this clashing of how you're singing and what you're saying. And when we finally get to the chorus, well, it's just overjoyed, right? I'm curious. I'm actually mostly curious. What is on your grin right now? No, just something. Because I went, yeah, yeah. And then your voice went like, yeah.

And I was thinking about just like the way pitch can get locked into a grid. You almost get just a spoken. It's the musicality of her own voices. Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful thing. Well, it makes the energy that much sweet. right? That's like the payoff that you get without feeling the lows the highs don't hit us hard or something. Yeah, maybe there's an element of like kind of mania to the song in that way. You don't have the highs without the lows.

The contrast is I think further enhance in the harmony. And when we listen to the horn line, this is the other piece for me, which is just an absolute essential ingredient for energy. And of course, horns are going to bring energy. But you bring in horns in a way which are kind of jarring. So just as we have in the lyrics, we have this sort of tension between dark and light. We have that happening in the horns as well because they come in. You know, actually, let's just talk a little bit more about the highs and the lows.

Tell me about it. Yeah, if you want to. To me, there was something that felt, you know, not overtly, but maybe a little bit topical in finally writing the lyrics to the song, which were kind of the last element, which is just sort of like, again, the backdrop of, you know, the encroaching fascism and everything.

Yeah. And just like so much bad news and, you know, disheartening stuff out there. And just sort of like the, and maybe actually, maybe we'll wind up there. I'm not, yeah, I think you have a program for how we're going to go. We can go anywhere. But just this idea of like, how do you respond to that? Do you let it just take you out and you just curl up in a fetal position? I've done a lot of that.

Or can it be some sort of imperative to action, to movement? Is there a way to come together and to respond collectively and articulating joyfully, like, what we stand for, what we believe in? I really believe deeply in a politics of joy, which is that if you're not fighting for the joy that you want to exist in the world and you're only coming from anger, then kind of what you're fighting for is. anger. And anger has an important role in exciting people and getting out in the streets and moving people. But if underlying it isn't joy, you're missing something essential. And it really speaks to me because Nate and I actually, I think out of that, I had been

curled up on the sofa plenty over the last couple of years about the rise of authoritarianism. And Nate and I felt it was really important to go get out the vote. So we were actually driving around in Southern California listening to this track as we were knocking on people's doors and encouraged them to... Canvassing soundtrack. Yeah. And it worked. Wow.

Yeah. So, if it fills its message. That's awesome. Wow. That's so cool. Right. But maybe, again, because it acknowledges that pain and depression and darkness, too, like it would be perhaps artificial to just have the highs, you know?

Yeah. I remember I was like playing a rough version of the song for Laura Lee Rodriguez. Empress of when it was maybe like half done or so. And some of the words were different. It was just sort of a scratch vocal. But the second verse line about like sometimes it gets so depressed was in there. And she was like that right there, that's really important to the song. And her saying that I was kind of, oh, yeah, that's a great, that's a great call. And that was a little bit of a key to unlocking, yeah, like what the story was in the words. Part of the songwriter is to pen things that would maybe you feel uncomfortable to say aloud, but when we sing them, all of a sudden, we have permission

to get into the depths of what we're really feeling. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm a believer in that. I appreciate you putting that in there. Let's talk about harmony. Let's talk about these horns already. I want some horns. Sounds good. I just love the horns. But the thing that stuck out to me about these horns is that you bring these horns in, literally in a minor way. You have this little minor ascending sequence that they play. Mm-hmm. And then they end on the major. It's sort of embodied within just this tiny little moment when the horns enter into the chorus.

We have the same movement of depressed into energy, condensed down into a musical line. And I think that's wonderful. Wow. You mean just that like, da, da, da, da, da, da. Exactly that. Yeah. Because it starts.

So what scale here? So you. Is that a flat two? It's like flat six, five. Okay. One flat seven. One flat seven. And then natural six, five, at least on the top harmony in the trumpet.

Right. So it starts, so it's literally starting on the flat six, which is borrowed from the minor scale. And then by the, you know, the crest of that line, it's like, reached up to the major six. This is really helpful. I struggle with that because I was like, wait, why is that one like that? But the other one's like that. And I was sort of like, is it sometimes? you get, you like, you know, you're just making an idea and you're like, oh, oh, there's

supposed to be an apostrophe there. Yeah. Or whatever. And that was one where I was sort of like, should it be that dissident? Yes. And at the end of the day, I was like, I don't know why, but it has to be. And the way you're out making, like telling a story about that, that's awesome, man. That's, thank you.

Wow. Yeah. Minor to major, dissonance to consonants. That's why that moment is, or part of the reason it's so cathartic. And then the bottles come in and then it's like... And we're back up. We got energy. That's cool.

That's cool. So we've got ingredients of energy coming from rhythm, from lyric, from harmony. Are there any other elements for you that stood out that are bringing the energy here? I mean, just Amber Mark's voice. Yes. It's insane. And it has so much energy and power in it. Yeah.

We're going to save that for the second half because it's so fantastic. And we're going to dig into it. So maybe what we'll do is we'll take a quick break here. We come back, we're going to ask the question of whether or not this is a pops long in disguise. And we're going to figure out why it is. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions.

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may be dissonant and angular and a little different difficult unpleasant off putting alienating abstruse

recondite to be able we can pick more up later all the things that I love about the dirty projectors all right

but one of the things I noticed when I was listening to this track is that it actually felt like there was a lot of corollary things happening in top 40 pop music that for folks who may not know your music or for whom they are sort of more accustomed to just like straightforward pop music,

I thought it would be a great sort of like gateway drug into this track. And so we're going to do a segment we're going to call across the charts. And we're going to listen to a couple of the things that I'm hearing that have a lot of resonance just with in terms of message, sound, other things by no means we're saying they're copying, borrowing or even related, but it's just things that I'm hearing and they're exciting. So what I want to do is I'll play you some tracks that we're hearing in the top 40.

Things are something at the top 10. And I want to see if there are points of resonance. And if there aren't, you're like, you're totally wrong, that's fun too. So the first track I want to play for you is called Happier by marshmallow and Best Steel. Oh, yeah. Then only for a minute.

I want to change my mind because this just don't feel right. to me. I want to raise your spirits. I want to see you smile. No, that means I'll have to leave. I like that. Gentlemen, what are you hearing? Any dirty projector relationships? What do we think? The first time, I've heard the song before. I heard it in an Uber a couple weeks ago. Yeah. And to me, the close relationship, we didn't hear the verse when we listen just now, but the close relationship of the movement of the verse melody and the words yeah it felt like very like it felt like good storytelling yeah and i and i and i like responded to it you know the production is

maybe not what i would like to to always live in or something but i was like as a as a like when you're writing a melody and then you're writing words and everything that oftentimes they're it's hard to find the lyric that exactly matches the grammar of the melody or whatever. And with this specific song, I was like, damn, like, they're really entwined. Part of what Bastille does well, the vocal is a shifting from a straight feel to a triplet feel. And it happens so seamlessly, but it also introduces, I think, a little bit of unease in the lyric. So the thing that I'm hearing is I think there's some lyrical connections. that basically here we have a song that, um,

is called happier, but it's about a breakup. Yeah. And, you know, you're, you're not writing a breakup song, but I like this idea that we can take the lows in our life and find a way out of them.

And so best deal is singing about, you know, I want you to be happier. So I got to break up with you. And just as they're sort of moving from the pre-course into the, the drop, we get this, you know,

with this big sort of euro hook that, you know, that kind of thing. And what a great way to overcome pain. So there's just some of the miracle connection. Okay, I want to move on to the next track. Wait, do you say something about triplets in there? Yeah, in the verse, we didn't hear it.

He's like on that migos flow, the Versace. Oh, interesting. When the morning comes and we see what we've become. In the cold light of day, we're a flame in the wind on the fire that we be gone. Which is interesting. Yeah, in the context of marshmallow, but then also in the context of Bastille. Yeah. I just want to take that.

I have to say that I used to use your music in my music theory classes, Dave, to illustrate simple meter versus compound meter. Oh, really? I use Temecula Sunrise because it goes from like a division of the beat in groups of three, you know. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's like one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, one, two. Then it switches like one and two and one and. two. So the beat stays the same, but the division changes, right? One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, and two, and one, two, three, one, two, and two, and. So the first is compound, and the second is simple. And when you're working with, you know, freshman music students, it's like a really great way to get into that idea. Anyway, sorry, that was not related to anything. I just thought of it. But it's, it is happening in the best deal. There's, there's so much productive tension between a triple feel and,

a double feeler. And I was like coming back on a plane from, we did a live from here. Oh, yeah. That's such a fun show. It was really, yeah. It was so fun. And then like everybody was flying back to L.A. and I was in a conversation with a couple of the guys in the live from here band. So talented. Yeah, they're insane. It's like, yeah. I mean, they're like, that was really, really fun. It was really inspiring to be a part of. But they, you know, we were kind of talking and people were like, oh yeah, like I think Trap is done. You know, I think that it's going to be opening up into some more like creative things. And I had to be like, what do you guys talk about?

Like the way that Trap like gives emotional and formal meaning to these new subdivisions of, of the 16th note and like this new variation between like triplets and eighths and sixteenths. Like that's forever. That's like a new vocabulary. Yeah. And like maybe the production will change. But those are like amazing tools. It's here to stay. So maybe that's a great segue into the next track

because I'm hearing some of those, the way in which you're playing with the rhythm and some of the sounds that you're using, I'm hearing elsewhere with things that might be more directly derivative or drawing from a trap aesthetic. So this is LMI's trip. So Dave, I want to ask you just for, especially for folks who might be not as familiar with sort of the subdivisions of sounds and rhythms that you were mentioning, could you just describe what you're hearing in that song, which are pulling from a trappisthetic and the sort of new vocabulary that's available to us? I mean, maybe just in the hat, you know, in the hats.

Yeah, the high hats, yeah. The way that they're moving, you know, that the whole kind of elastic quality of, you know, switching between something that's like straight. Yeah, would you be so bold that's to try. be box up like a straight trap. Definitely not. Definitely. Then we've got Nate Sloan, professor. What's a, can you give me a straight high hat?

Borderline abusive. You want me to do a straight high hat? Yeah. So straight high hat. Yeah. Yeah. How do you do a high hat sign? Yeah.

Great. There you go. Are you satisfied? I'm satisfied. Now, what would a trap artist do with the high hat? Tick, Tick, tich. Tis.

Tis. Okay. What do you think, Dave? Or we could just listen to the song. Yeah, that was terrible. So, okay, I'm sorry. What stood out for me in this track was her vocal. And I'm hearing, I really like the way in which there is this movement between staccato and legato singing and where she's sort of jumping in on rhythms where you're just not exactly sure where she's going to end up.

Yeah. Yeah. You're hearing that? I feel it. Yeah. I mean, I know Bood Up and I know this one. Those are the only two LMI songs. But they're both so solid.

I want to go deeper on her album. I think the first thing that sticks out to me is actually the traditional character of it. How it feels like the melodies and the way it's harmonized. It feels like SWV or like groove theory or something. Her voice has that 90s R&B quality. And then those kind of like block harmonies that the three. part block harmonies that she throws the hooks on and both Boot Up and this one are so cool. They just sounds so good.

I think in Boot Up we even get more of her fantastic rhythmic flexibility. Boot Up has this almost sort of onomatopoeia sort of feel to it, right? It's both like Boot Up. Oh, right. It's the sound of getting together. And it kind of like flows together. It's very scat-ish. and she uses it over and over

like is it scatting or is she saying we are booed up you never quite find which one it is and that being in between matches this sort of insecurity of the trap high hat it's like it can't end up anywhere you never quite know and it's exciting Nate do you have anything you would like to share about LMI

I guess I'm just thinking you know about productive tension and this how the trap drums are doing this like complex rhythmic thing but then on top of that like Dave was saying her voice is so conversational and yeah it just feels like eminently natural so maybe that's like the productive tension of that song you know the drums are very jittery and and unsettled but her vocals are just like

kind of serene and and that goes together really well yeah it's like a timeless song timeless melody and then the certainly the like the rhythmic pattern underneath it feels like very much of today yeah yeah it's like can we hear it again yeah It's a more legato Yeah, and love to hear a dirty projector's cover of that Yeah, and look your vocalist could hit those Oh yeah, no, they definitely could The yeah, and just by the filtering that they're doing to the hats or whatever

but almost has like a melodic quality. Like the melodic quality that has is really, that's really cool. That's a good one. One thing I caught just listening to that next time around was, you know, oftentimes when we track vocals, you might just do a line at a time, right? And then you bring them all together. But there's this one moment where she's like, I'm tripping on you and she actually trips over her vocal.

Like I think they intentionally sort of put, or you can hear her singing over herself as the next line comes in, whether intentionally or not, it's a great effect. I like that. Yeah. This is where I go like conspiracy theory Let's do another one. Yeah okay

Let's do another one Moving on That's a deep breed I love that Last last one for across the charts I want to play Khalid's better Unfortunately have to fade out

Over my favorite part Which is the talk box Oh There's a nice talk box solo at the end Whoa What are you all hearing in this? It's made me feel very optimistic About the state of pop music right now

You said these are all currently on the top 100 that's rat I mean these are great tracks and they've got I mean this is so this is like so similar in a way to the LMI

it's got that trap hi hat sound underneath again like a very languorous like beautiful vocal with maybe also some sort of 90s throwback elements as well yeah I don't know I'm curious but you also have a

dirty projectors axis here for me that the axis is primarily, well, when we, we have a sort of a lyrical connection of a positive enthusiastic message, that's maybe a little derivative. There's not much, that's maybe the deepest connection. But for me, I'm hearing the 808 as a great entry into I feel energy. And I, and one of the things I love about how the, the kick drum slash 808, and here, there's actually, I think, two different things happening. There's both a kick and an 808 base sub that come in together. And I think that here you're getting that seems

sort of quality of it's not your typical, it's not a rock backbeat kind of thing, right? It is, you never quite know exactly when the kick is going to hit. And that surprise is what keeps you consistently interested, even if underneath it we're getting a, as you described, sort of this languid, sort of loop, this very sort of washy feel. The thing that gives me energy in that is where is the kick going to hit? And I think if people are enjoying that trap kick, sound, I think they're going to be super into I feel energy because I think you take that and you extend it to its logical ends to the place where I'm always trying to guess where it's going to come in and I'm always trying to dance around it. So that's my highly better connection.

I can see it. I can see it. Downbeat agnosticism. Yeah, exactly. I like that. Downbeat agnosticism. I'm buying. I feel like there in that one, you know, to get into this, the way you're like getting conspiracy theory on the... Oh, please, come on. On the LMI and you're like, oh man, like, yeah, as she's tripping, her vocal is tripping. I love that.

But to me, like, to ask the what the relationship is between the words and the character of the melody here, it feels like there's one of irony or dissonance between like nothing gets better than this and then the sort of like equivocal character,

the conflicted emotional character. Yeah. To me, I don't know. Maybe I have to listen to the whole song a little bit more or something, but I'm sort of like, well, it doesn't get better than this. So I think on first read, the song kind of looks like a relationship. And then on the second read, it's kind of like a casual hookup is what the song is about. And so perhaps there is that underlying feeling of like, oh, maybe this thing isn't as satisfying as it seems to be as it's presented.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I don't know. That's a really, I do, I really appreciate your, your sort of fine tuning, looking at how are they saying the thing that they're saying?

Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of like me being like, hey, Nate, how you doing today? You're like, good? Yeah,

it has that feel. Or you just saying how, like, if, if Nate just did, like, was Kurt to you or something. And you were like,

how are you doing today, man? Our entire relationship. interesting um yeah it's like it doesn't get any better than this or is he's being like it doesn't get better than this

yeah oh that's good that was the read that was the read hands up eyes down that was like that was Oscar worthy that was great okay so I we've made some connections between some things that are happening in the charts some of it's all and some of it's off that's fine

I'm curious you know you you have a really strong pronounced sound that when I hear a song by Dave, I know, I listen to a song by Dave. And that's something that every artist I think strives for. Within a few seconds, I'm like, oh, it's a very projector song. I got it. But you've also, in the last couple of years, been collaborating with some major pop acts. You've collaborated with Solange. You collaborated on the song for five seconds, which was probably the biggest supergroup ever created in all time with Paul McCartney and Kanye and Rihanna. and on your last album you brought in a lot of electronic sort of beat making sounds into your indie rock aesthetic and sort of found a meeting point between the two of them. And so when I was listening to this track, I had this just realization like, this thing's a pop song.

It's a pop song. And I wanted to look at a couple of things that for me, it stood out that this is a pop song in some kind of sheep's clothing. And the first thing I noticed, as I was listening to this song, I was like, I'm trying to figure out because of all of these moving rhythms. and trying to find, literally sometimes find my downbeat. I was like, how is the song constructed? And then I was like, oh, it's this pop song structure. It is literally verse pre-chorus chorus, and what's amazing about pop is that one thing that is sort of indelible across contemporary pop music is that form tends to be somewhat more solid than the maybe instrumental choices that we can make. So I just want to play for folks how this really wild and exciting song does map out in a way that we have just enough.

predictability with in its form to have something to work with. So let's, wait, let's establish the platonic pop form first, right? So verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse. Usually a shorter second verse. Sure. Yeah, maybe, okay, maybe, okay, maybe a double verse the first time. Kurt verse is second. But no, no, no, no, try.

You're already, you're already messing it up. We got a, let's doing the simplest version. Verse pre-chorus chorus, chorus, chorus, bridge, bridge, chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro. Yes, exactly. And so we've got... And maybe there's a refrain after the second chorus

before the bridge that also happens. Yeah, yeah. After the... Thank you, Dave. Increasingly, a refrain or post-chorus? Good. Yeah, okay. So here's...

I feel energy in its reduced form. We get a verse. We build the energy into a pre-chorus. Wow. And of course, we get a chorus. And I love that you deliver us a down bridge.

Yeah. And a string outro. Now, that's not usual, but I love it. I had to play it. It maps onto a normal pop form. And I think that's a wonderful thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Is that something that you're deliberately thinking about as you're constructing your song? I like form. I like form because also it's like every song is a movie, you know, and I like when things start somewhere and somewhere different. And so I love the way form is a way. of like thinking about those things. Oh, I see like the way like the way movies have like a conventional three-act structure, but there's like infinite variations.

Yeah. That arc. Maybe music is analogous. Okay, cool. You start and in very different places in this song, which I'm now realizing. Do I? Yeah, you start with your. Oh, right.

And then you have this beautiful string quartet thing at the end. Right. Very sentimental. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true. But the chords for the outro are the same chords as the bridge. Oh, yeah.

So maybe there's something there. Can't catch that, did you, Charlie? What do you think of the form that you're bringing here, how is it serving the listener? I don't know, maybe like what we were talking about earlier in terms of like responding to the stuff that gets us down. Yeah. And, you know, navigating a response to it.

What is the response? The response is. Action. Yeah. You're down. What's the way of navigating that? What's the passage toward claiming joy or whatever? I think you do a really great job of walking me through that experience and the formalism of the form gives me something to hold on to that then allows for all the experimentation of rhythm such that you've got me. I'm with you. And if you had extended that 808 through infinite permutations for 18 minutes, Unless you're Steve Rice, you're going to lose me. Yeah. Right. Like, you're moving into a different, you'd be moving into minimalist, other kinds of music.

But you're holding me. And there is the safety of the form opens up so much experimentation, I find. I love that way of putting it. Yeah, it's like, you know, like a ghost story is going to have a structure. Right. Right. The form allows you to do anything. And particularly when I'm getting all weird with the modal mixture and the additive rhythm and the rest of it,

the structure that we intuitively understand what's going to be happening next allows dirty projectors to like take these other weird risks you know yeah yeah no that makes i mean it's to avoid the the conventional pop song form perhaps allows you to avoid what shrivinsky called the abyss of freedom yeah infinite choice is not so okay so i said i just have a quick thought Because I'm thinking, I love hearing the, you know, sort of emotional political backdrop of this composition, you know, and hearing it as like a call to collective joy and collective action. And is that perhaps mirrored in the numerous, you know,

collaborations that mark this album as well? We've got Amber Mark on this track. We've got Empress of appearing on the album, Dear Nora, Hym, some other people I'm not thinking of right now. Rostam and Rostim. Yeah, yeah. Is that part, is that like, was that a conscious, or maybe a subconscious reaction to that fetal position you were talking about to, like, reach out to other people? Yeah, yeah, I think so.

I think so, you know, yeah. And also just sort of a response to the previous record, which was so sort of solitary. I think I did get these record these songs to a certain point. And I was like, it wants to feel more collective than this. You know, it feels like, you know, I want to be singing with people. Cool. That was the other thing that stood out for me, which really brings us into a. pop aesthetic is that you brought along Amber Mark, who is an extraordinary rising pop star who we've had on

our show is one of our absolute favorite guest. Oh, she's been on your show. I got to check that episode. Yeah. Yeah. We did some Kendrick Lamar breakdowns together. Yeah, we kind of made her, basically. Yeah. No. No. Um, but I just want to listen to Amber's vocal because it's really stunning. Yeah. Ooh, that drum outro. But, well, Tell us about, what is Amber's vocal doing here for you? How is it serving the song? There's so much power in her voice, you know, and her timbre. And, you know, you can sing something, and then another person can sing it.

It means totally different things. And, yeah, I just, I love what she does on the song. I was actually surprised by how well your voices blend, because you both have very distinct voices, and yet they came together in a really gorgeous way. That's cool, yeah. I'm curious if there are either consciously or subconsciously through just absorption, other elements of pop songwriting and aesthetic that you bring into the dirty protectors. I mean, I would imagine so.

It would be maybe better to talk about it like in a specific sort of instance. It's like what I feel energy. Anything else that I'm missing? Oh, other elements in this song? This might be more the dreaded word indie. I know, I know. than pop in that there's like a historical investigation happening or like a historical fantasy a little bit in the song.

Just like the idea of like before like when disco was still live instruments. And then at the same time on the other side of town there was like no way of music happening. Like that I feel like is maybe the kind of like the primal scene of the of the, production of this song where there's something sort of spiky and like aggressive about like the guitars and things but then you know yeah then there's like a live disco element yeah yeah to like the roads and the drumming and stuff yeah yeah i get some of like the niles rogers and the guitar yeah yeah yeah or princess even also you know now once you drop the disco bomb I made this connection to Marvin Gay's got to give it up, which, like, I feel energy starts with a lot of voices in a room kind of, you know, you feel like you're in a party, and uses a Coke bottle percussion.

Yeah, right. I don't know what kind of bottle you used on, or Morrow used on this track, but. They were Mountain Valley. Good choice. Does it have a better tamper? For the connoisseur. for the connoisseur. I can't say.

That's great. Cool. So, yeah, so not only, now, yeah, this is great. Not only mainstream pop, but, you know, pop of yours is mentoring. And I had this idea that, you know how, like, it feels like a sort of, like, universal thing to make the, the album or the song that's like, this is the solo piano song. Yeah. This is just the guy and an acoustic.

to guitar actually. Yeah. And I felt like maybe as universal, but at the other end of that was like, this is like the disco song. Yeah. This is, like, it makes me think like the country star Casey Musgraves. Yeah. Has a disco song on her new album.

Right. Or like, this is the weekend, but it's like disco. Right. Bringing in death punk. And so, yeah, I think, you know, you were kind of talking about it earlier, like playing with the, and this is probably all so in my head that it's, you might not get it in the song per se, but like, you know, if the reputation of dirty projectors is like, you know, angular and what were some of the words?

Obstruce, uh, recondite, obscure. Like, what if I just made like a disco song? Yeah. You know, so there was like an element of that. Like, but could I do it in a totally just inspired weirdo way? Well, I think part of what success. about this track for me is as I said at the beginning it's like I heard it the first time I was like yep I got energy this is fun I want to dance and then it also like it's both lean in and lean back at the same time because I can

lean back and listen to just have fun and as soon as I lean in I go conspiratorial like what the heck is happening what's going on in your brain to pull this thing apart so it has layers that the more you listen to it it continues to give and I think that's something that um fans of pop music ought to spend some time with this song and listen in a little closer, zoom into parts, and you'll find that it just keeps giving back. I think that's a really exciting part of the composition. I think we maybe have gone. Are you giving them homework? Yeah. All right. Great. Quiz next week. We'll be going over. Yeah. What beat does the third chorus vocal enter on? All right. Homework. I think we've gone way too deep. I've had a lot of fun. Not nearly enough. Yeah. Yeah. This is great.

Thank you, Dave, for entertaining our absurd deconstruction. No, I love it. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. And thanks for listening in this way, like as closely as you are. It was really fun to talk. Thanks, ma'am. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding. Me, Nate Sloan.

Our engineering and editing is done by Bill Lance. Our community manager is Sarah Terry. And design by Luke Harris. I want to give a special thanks to Dave Longstreath for his interview. Also want to thank Jossie Adams and Zach Tarino Miller gave Appel and Cameron Plummer for their insights into the Dirty Prodictors. You can find more episodes of our show at www.w.w.com or go to Radio Public, the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, basically anywhere you'd like to get your podcast. There, you shall find us.

You can contact us if you've got musical questions, insights, quandaries. Conundrums. Any kind of problem, really. We're here for you. You'll find us on Twitter and Instagram at Switched On Pop. We'll be back in two weeks. Until then, thanks for listening.