Two mismatched offspring of the late great Ali Farka Touré came together in the intimate quarters of the Somerville Theatre under the auspices of Boston’s World Music. Ali’s scion Vieux Farka Touré took the stage first, fronting an enthusiastic five-piece band that gamely pursued his lightning-in-a-bottle riffs with mile-wide grooves. Particularly in light of the posthumous stateside acclaim for Ali’s last album, Savane, Vieux might wonder if he’s the beneficiary of nostalgia-by-proxy. But while he quotes his father’s inimitable licks between songs, his main work is a different beast, perhaps an attempt to refit Ali’s desert blues within a heroic guitar rock paradigm, somewhere between Lobi Traoré’s manic, clattering trajectory and his father’s John Lee Hooker-like gut reliance.
The project is not without risks. One song veered dangerously close to a stodgy power ballad. Others lacked direction, consisting of magnificent grooves chasing their tails while Vieux tore up his fretboard. At the end of his set, Vieux invited the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth and Amber Coffman on-stage. Longstreth hid bashfully behind his guitar, but Coffman shimmied and shook before busting out a melismatic wail that sounded not at all Malian but somehow fit right in.
Dirty Projectors were the night’s headliners. They borrow from Ali Farka Touré’s chromatic modes for their fidgety, off-kilter riffs, but from that DNA the Projectors build an entirely different beast. Dirty Projectors’ latest album, Bitte Orca, is their most accessible (despite its gnomic title), but the band is driven by an intellectual rigor that is both exhilarating and occasionally exhausting. So they drew us in gently, with just Longstreth and Angel Deradoorian taking the stage for the frigid adoration of “Two Doves,” before the rest of the band showed up.
Dirty Projectors are astonishingly adept performers—it must take a great deal of skill and no small amount of bloody-mindedness to soldier through the dense, discordant harmonies that form the connective tissue for many of their songs. Yet, with the exception of the button-cute Coffman, their charisma is strictly confined to the music. Deradoorian is sphinx-like behind keys, guitar and a Rickenbacker bass as long as she is tall. Longstreth looks jumpy approaching the mic between songs, limiting his patter to a moment of gushing about the honor of playing with Touré.
Nonetheless, Bitte Orca is their most approachable album yet, most of all on the gorgeous single “Stillness Is The Move,” which suggests what might have happened if Beyoncé had sat in with Ali Farka Touré. Coffman ditched her guitar, pulled her mic from its stand and gave us everything she had while the rest of the band worked at the fattest groove in their arsenal. The naked appeal of “Stillness” only exaggerates the cerebral awkwardness of the band, but that too is somehow part of the Projectors’ appeal.
For the grand finale, Vieux’s band joined the Projectors for “No Intention.” Vieux cocked his head while Longstreth modeled the fragmentary, self-contained, Ali-biting riff, then grinned and dug in. Longstreth—chin out, eyes closed—sang, “The renegade feeling satisfied / You blinked and closed your eyes / You like the feeling of Saturday / You love the danger in the night.”
It was a little shambolic to be sure: Vieux’s solo started a little tentative, there was some uncertainty over the alignment of verse and chorus, and Longstreth’s guitar gave out before the end, leaving him waving the band onwards and out. But there was an irresistible exhilaration to the collision between one band’s comfortable grooves and the other’s precisely executed maneuvers.
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This comment stream is so meta. Great review Kelly.
by chris on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 07.50 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
no prob. The whole album is excellent, combining some of the harder sonics of Los Angeles with the meat of his debut and obviously difficult to summarize in only 50 words… 
I’d say it’s on par with the debut, but better than Los Angeles.
by kelly on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.23 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
By the way, I really liked the mp3 posted. Thanks.
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “Picture yourself coasting your bike past space funk palm trees, homeless harpists, vintage video arcades, electronic drum circles, and 60s psychedelic singers who’re waiting for the bus. Cosmogramma is kinda like that if someone suddenly tripped you just as you’re starting to enjoy the ride. But in a good way.””
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
you’ll notice the author’s name under title.
by kelly on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.11 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “Picture yourself coasting your bike past space funk palm trees, homeless harpists, vintage video arcades, electronic drum circles, and 60s psychedelic singers who’re waiting for the bus. Cosmogramma is kinda like that if someone suddenly tripped you just as you’re starting to enjoy the ride. But in a good way.”
by HKD on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.10 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
i saw them open for the Cave Singers, not very original, the crowd was not into it either, frankly i think they suck
by rigamarole on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 11.30 am from the entry: The Dutchess & The Duke Tour Dates, Y'all
