Dirty Projectors' Nat Baldwin at Club 1808 [Show Preview]
Anybody who’s been to a Dirty Projectors show in the past few years can attest to the exhilarating feeling they produce in person. There’s Dave Longstreth’s strange warble and jagged guitar work, all the while the three-headed dragon of Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle perform some of the most complex and jaw-dropping vocal harmonies you’ll ever see. Yet anchoring all the artiness is Nat Baldwin, bassist for the group and a songwriter in his own right. He’s set to release his fourth album, People Changes, on May 24, but in the meantime you can check him out live tonight at Club 1808.
People Changes first started to form in 2007, when Baldwin wrote most of the material. Yet for him, music is a process. He recruited a number of fellow musicians to flesh out the sound, and the album started to shift in sound with the increased input and improvisation. After three years of off-and-on work, Baldwin finally put the songs to tape, resulting in a musical hybrid, carefully constructed around jazz, classical, and experimental ideas.
Woodwinds and strings are the primary instruments on the album, gently alternating between melodic and discordant passages in the blink of an eye. Baldwin seems to have inherited some of Dave Longstreth’s throaty singing style, but he melds it with Arthur Russell-influenced sweetness. Not surprisingly, People Changes opens with a bold take on Russell’s “A Little Lost.”
Baldwin owes a lot to the famed underground experimenter, but he’s able to step into his own spotlight. It’ll be interesting to see how he manages to wrangle all of his swirling musical thoughts and put them into a live show. Houston's Hearts of Animals and locals Spiked Punch open.
Nat Baldwin: [myspace]
