The third album from Dirty Projectors, Rise Above is indie singer/songwriter David Longstreth's re-fashioning of 10 songs from Black Flag's Damaged. His goal is to recreate, not to reproduce the music, and in doing so he helps us remember that for all the sex, drugs and violence, Black Flag was just a bunch of kids singing about their feelings. He takes the driving forces behind hardcore punk (noise and speed) and replaces them with a persistent love of rounds, backup vocalists and vocal variations that sometimes make him sound like an offbeat R&B singer. Longstreth complements these dynamics with understated rhythms and guitar; Rise Above doesn't sound like the Dirty Projectors playing Black Flag; it sounds like Longstreth improvising and inventing with Black Flag as his muse.
The music draws its strength from his ability to express his ideas in pure strokes, free from the constrictions of traditional song structure and form - Rise Above is a flowing, beautiful mess. Often, however, Longstreth's invention appears self-indulgent and begins to dull when it fails to go anywhere. His singing, for example, is undeniably melodramatic: He goes up and down almost like he's afraid his songwriting isn't good enough to stand on its own. Unlike Damaged itself, or perhaps similarly, Rise Above falls short of brilliance because it relies too heavily on a single texture which cannot carry the whole album.
3.5 STARS
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