Dave Longstreth does a surprisingly good Donald Trump. Or rather, he does a surprisingly good impression of Alec Baldwin's Saturday Night Live impression of Donald Trump. Sitting in the far corner of a cute boutique hotel in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and alternating between sips of a carrot-orange-ginger juice cocktail and a black coffee, the Dirty Projectors mastermind looks a little tired, a little tense, his face unshaven and hair artfully out of whack. In fact, he looks a little bit like almost everyone in New York City (and, presumably, a lot of people around the country) on the bright, crisp late morning almost exactly 24 hours before the inauguration of our 45th president. His Baldwin-cum-Trump—and enthusiastic fondness for the recurring late night mockery—feels like an all too familiar laugh-so-I-don't-cry reaction to a "crazy sense of doom" (his words). But in addition to trying to reckon with the new normal of constant helplessness, there's a great deal more on his mind: For the first time in 15 years, Dave Longstreth is going it alone.
Over the course of six studio full-lengths, Longstreth and his constantly rotating cast of players have been crafting some of the most engaging and beloved indie rock (whatever that means) of the 21st century, informed by borderless genre-leeching that posited Longstreth as the heir apparent to David Byrne. 2007's Rise Above—a reimagining of the Black Flag classic that was constructed from vague memories of the recording alone—introduced them into larger conversations (gimmick notwithstanding), but it was the mutant pop and R&B of 2009's Bitte Orca that Dirty Projectors earned their reputation as true innovators and trendsetters. They cemented that reputation three years later on the incredibly rich Swing Lo Magellan, but behind the scenes, Longstreth—and, in turn, the band itself—was coming apart. The romantic relationship Longstreth shared with vocalist and DP member Amber Coffman (who first appeared on Rise Above) was unravelling, and its inevitable dissolution left him shattered.
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