Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
It was my first night in Georgia. I remember the moon, it was full. I remember holding her hand as we drove from the little house she grew up in. I remember little things, like the way I freaked out when “Temecula Sunrise” first exploded from the speakers, or soft smiles exchanged hearing “Two Doves” for the first time. Or the way she sung along to the eerily appropriate metaphysical love song “Stillness is the Move”. Or the shivers when Amber and Angel’s voices soar at the climax of “Useful Chamber”. Or the swooning romance of “Fluorescent Half Dome”.
She put this album on, and we sat in near-silence throughout its forty-one minute duration on the midnight drive back to Macon. The street lamps were melting. Flares and glare bent on the foggy windows. All this surreal light at night. I was in a hazy dream of being out of my world, out of myself it seemed.
There are dozens of moments like this. I could write endlessly about this summer, the Fourth of July, reconciliation in Seattle, drives through Portland at night, the last time I saw my grandmother alive, all of them just as valid, and all connected to this record.
And I probably could spend pages (and pages and pages) dissecting how good it is on every conceivable technical level—lyrically, compositionally, melodically, the sheer scope of the thing, how it seems to effortlessly redefine (and reinforce) pop music and what it is capable of, how every moment is a pitch-perfect highlight, how, even all this nostalgia aside, it is, without a doubt, my favorite album of this year, and one of the albums closest to my heart for all time.
But at the end of the day, Bitte Orca is the soundtrack of this drive, of my trip, of this feeling of renewal and escape. To me, it is the sound of falling in love. In love with life and its enormity. In love with being alive amongst lovers, friends, and family. That’s what this record sounds like to me.
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