When David Longstreth sat down with 40 finished demos to plan the sixth Dirty Projectors album, there was the potential for creative overload: He’s never had a problem piling numerous experiments atop each other, so the record could have become a grotesque Frankenstein’s monster of patched-together ideas. Instead, Swing Lo Magellan shows a surprising level of restraint, adding structure to what the band has done on previous records. The album is defined not by its progressions but by its purposeful diminishments: less orchestration, less vocal trickery, less international influence. While Longstreth’s music is never completely straightforward, Swing Lo Magellan is his most accessible set of songs to date. But more importantly, with some of the artistic muddle cleared away, the record makes an emotional connection his other albums haven’t.
