What Dave Longstreth Does With Silence

Dirty Projectors have always been most interesting at their most uncomfortable, and About to Die—from the 2012 album Swing Lo Magellan—is uncomfortable in the best possible way. Dave Longstreth strips everything back to something close to a folk song, then undermines it with the band’s characteristic off-kilter guitar work and those uncanny vocal harmonies. It’s the sound of someone trying to hold it together and not quite managing. The video matches that register: spare, slightly wrong, hard to shake.