Customer Reviews

Rise Above [Vinyl]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rise Above is Dirty Projectors front-man (and only permanent member) Dave Longstreth's attempt to, get this, rewrite Black Flag's album Damaged from memory. But this isn't a collection of covers - what he's ended up with here is a pile of ethereal, amazing music with the characteristic complex Projectors harmonies, syncopation, and turn-your-head-around compositions that bears no resemblance to Black Flag, despite the fact that they share the same lyrics. Take "Police Story", the most iconoclastic track. It's a soft, flowing, reed-heavy piece with an opening that feels somewhere out of Debussy, at yet the lyrics go, "This f*cking city, it's run by pigs, they take away the rights from all the kids."

The amount of re-imagining it took to create these tracks makes the album something for the annals of pop music art-history. Interesting museum installation idea: play Rise Above on one side, Damaged on the other, and see if your head explodes.

I'm a big fan of the dirty projectors. They put on an awesome show & their records are never lacking. I own this album, Slaves Graves & Ballads, and New Attitude. All are fantastic. This CD specifically I could play on repeat forever & it wouldn't get old.

I would agree with the 2 star review, in that yes this band is different. If you can't handle some intentional off beat non-traditional usage of vocals, guitar and drums dirty projectors is not the band for you. I would definitely not compare them to Clash or the Arctic Monkeys though.

Rise Above, as anyone looking at this page is most likely aware of, is Dave Longstreth's attempt at recreating Black Flag's seminal album Damaged from memory. Or something along those lines. The music is completely different, certain songs are omitted, and even the lyrics are slightly altered from time to time. It's probably the hippest musical concept to take place in the last ten years and the results are nothing short of breathtaking. The songs are full of gorgeous vocal harmonies, brilliant guitar playing, and hair-raising rhythm sections. It's quite often that the most ethereal and pretty melodies are combined with Henry Rollins's angst-ridden lyrics (For example, the bouncy melody that opens "What I See" is mixed with the lines, "I want to live. I wish I was dead") and the effects are, basically, really freaking cool. For a person like myself who gets no musical enjoyment out of Black Flag's hardcore (and not to mention dated) sound, but still appreciates the poetic expression of anger, frustration, and a feeling of hopelessness in the modern world, this album does wonders. Rise Above is, in my opinion, a soon-to-be classic and a nearly perfect album because of both it's clever theme and it's many, MANY moments of brilliance. Try not to bob your head to the title track's chorus or not feel vindicated by the crescendo in "Gimme Gimme Gimme" where Longstreth sings "I know the world's got problems. I've got problems of my own. Not the kind that can't be solved." It can't be done. Put your faith in this guy.

...and maybe I am one too! People who critique this disc often talk about "oddness for oddnesses sake" or some such thing. Yeah, yeah, you want to find a Diamond in the Rough, one who doesn't wear some kind of MFA cred on his sleeve. I get it... OK, you guys, good luck searching the dystopic digital universe for the next Robert Johnson - and even if you find him, David Byrne and Bjork will be collaborating with him, TOO! - before you know it. The only questions that matter are these: Is this music beautiful? - answer:yes; Is this music amazing? - yes again. Is David Longstreth pretentious?............well.....sometimes...I gotta admit...The timbre of his voice - like some kind of horrible extreme parody of "sensitive". Oh well, nothing and nobody is perfect...except Amber and Angel - my God, they are really awesome. What would they do with their lives if they weren't drinking the DP Kool - Aid? Something as good? Better? Or would they become members of that bizarre breed of hardened Rock Freelancers? A horrible thought...hopefully not that. As I trudge through this universe, I become more and more convinced that people love everything about music - except music. Well, there is some incredible musical music here - and according to me, it doesn't get TOO much in the way of whatever it is that they are trying to "say". OK, it's not as immediate as the Sex Pistols - or even Gang of Four. But it fits into a playlist where Ligeti, Konono # 1, Pere Ubu and Cecil Taylor live happily together - take that Nico and your Muhly - ists! And you too, BOAC and your Bangling Woods! Some people just are congenitally incapable of playing Nature to your Culture (thank you Barbara Kruger), even if or when they try!

Not really into the orginal album that this was taken from but I can respect it. Dave has a way with rock and I believe soul beacause it heavy on the rock punk reggae side with a lead singer that sings so soulful.(although I blelieve the backup singer/guitarist Angel studied R&B music which give it so much soul). There should be another genre created for this type of music and it should be Rock & Soul but we shouldn't try to create boxes for this band what they do is even beyond that they are such a wild and out there band but the music doesn't leave you to out there. If you love this album go back further to records like Glad Fact, Slaves' Graves & Ballads their a whole different type of band (literally)and musically.

More importantly the songs have substance and I've kept this CD in constant rotation.

My personal favorites
Spray paint(The walls) My personal anthem (sometimes I feel like that)
Rise Above
No More
What I see
Miserable and Thirsty
Room 13
Police Story

hell the whole album

Ignore the other person. This cd is beautiful, intricate, and creatively composed. I haven't heard much like it, which can be bad, but in this case, it's good. This is wildly orchestrated bliss.

More people need to listen to this;it's sad that only two people have reviewed it.

Let me just start off by disclosing that I know nothing about this band's history. Before I bought this album I'd never heard of Dirty Projectors. All I know is what I hear when I play the songs. After a couple of listens, it sounds like there might be interesting music in there somewhere, but I haven't got the right ear to find it. The music strikes me as "off beat" and intentionally so; sonically, that is. Using mostly conventional rock sounds produced by drums bass guitars (amplified, and well recorded), but with odd tonalities and non-syncopated rhythms I get a hint of Clash just on the strange side of that group's best arrangements. This is certainly post-modern and I hesitate to invoke the Arctic Monkeys (a group I'm not wild about) but this band has that sort of immediacy. Anyway, on the whole I don't care for this record and would be unlikely to purchase another by the Dirty Projectors. Sorry.