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Monday, November 2, 2009

Dept. of Corrections Mistakes I Didn't Know I Was Making, or: Whale Fail

Posted by Eric Grandy on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:07 PM

Stranger reader Josh writes in with a correction to this week's Stranger Suggests for Wednesday night's Dirty Projectors show:

There's a scene in the addenda to Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in which the author, while kayaking, is overwhelmed by the sight of a killer whale leaping, Free Willy—style, out of the ocean in close proximity. That scene is all I can think of when trying to describe the impossible ebullience with which Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth yelps the words "Bitte orca!" halfway through the recent album of the same name, over an avalanche of avant-Afropop guitar. The album is a revelatory balancing act, as Longstreth's confounding arrangements coalesce again and again into irresistible melodies. (Neumos, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $15, 21+.) Eric Grandy

Writes Josh:

I can't imagine that more than ten people will notice or remember, but the whale described in the "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making" section of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius wasn't a killer whale, but a larger unspecified variety of gray whale that lifted a kayak while breaching rather than simply stunning while leaping in the distance. Anyway, it's a great story and a nice album. Thanks for the excuse to revisit both to confirm my recollections.

This sort of thing is probably why Longstreth went to Yale and I didn't.