Song Of The Earth

In the official billing for 2025s Song of the Earth, David Longstreth gets top billing, with Dirty Projectors coming in second and Stargaze, a German contemporary chamber orchestra, finishing third. This seems significant, since Longstreth has been Dirty Projectors uncontested leader for some time now, and listening to Song of the Earth, as much as it reflects most of the groups musical trademarks, it sounds like what it was intended to be. This album documents a performance piece composed by Longstreth reflecting very specific musical and thematic concepts, and its not a Dirty Projectors album in the traditional sense. Longstreths bandmates in Dirty Projectors (Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, and Olga Bell) are, along with Stargaze, accompanists performing a score hes written, and the result exists in a middle ground between the bands artful indie rock and a contemporary classical suite. If you like Dirty Projectors, chances are youll enjoy Song of the Earth, but this music lacks the immediacy and insistent pulse of the bands best work. The trademark harmonies are here, though the vocals are not as prominent as the music, and Stargaze brings a sense of refinement and dynamics that doesnt radically part from Longstreths melodic style and fondness for serialism, but certainly slows the music. Song of the Earth aims for a widescreen depth that plays more like a film score or a modern dance piece, and its not hard to imagine this was meant to accompany a visual presentation of some sort rather than standing on its own. The music certainly has a keen sense of purpose, and the lyrics intelligently ponder our relationship to the natural world and the urgency of protecting our environment as it becomes all the more vulnerable. (One passage draws its lyrics directly from David Wallace-Wells book The Uninhabitable Earth.) All that said, Song of the Earth demands more patience than 2009s Bitte Orca and 2018s Lamp Lit Prose, and even if this music is clearly Dirty Projectors-adjacent, billing it under the groups name might lead some fans of the band to expect a different experience than this delivers. Adjust your expectations, and Song of the Earth suggests David Longstreth has a bright future as a composer outside of the boundaries of indie rock, without entirely abandoning the ideas and influences that have defined his art. ~ Mark Deming