The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Dirty Projectors
Bitte Orca
(06.2009, Domino)
Verdict = Merriweather Post Pavilion is 2009’s only other album of this caliber

Bitte Orca is a prophet, an eight-foot tall shining wet black killer with a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher in one fin and a colonial cannon in the other, and it is screaming its unusual song and it sounds like triumph, like a realization, an actualization, and this whale is a machine, a beast, muscle built on muscle, taught with restraint and bearing all the explosiveness of nature, all the finesse and efficiency of a torpedo, and yes, the blasts do come, and this uncommon thing is huge, this thing has a center of gravity, it’s brimming with dynamism and craft, and its white teeth gleam and they have points like razors, real atom-smashers, and in it are past and present and future, and in it are grace and peace and in it are power and violence; it will make you swoon and make you smile and the glow of its being will warm the darkest corners of your soul; it will sit you down and break your heart and make you think about that and think about that again; it will snap with freight train force and bowl you over, bend you to fit its curve, challenge you, drop destroyers on your head; this creature has been to the summit, it has stood atop vistas and looked out over kingdom and culture and specie, and it has done its note-taking; this creature has english and deutsch and mbaqanga and alchemy, this creature is the desert and the sea, the mountains and the moon, this creation, this revelation, this thing is beautiful, and it is on a mission and it is well-equipped and well-traveled and well-learned and it is determined and it is coming for you, coming to shed some light, coming to demolish, coming to jubilate, coming to take you away.

– Braying Mantis

Stream of Bitte Orca on NPR