For the sake of transparency, let me start by saying that I'm reviewing Angel Deradoorian's debut EP, Mind Raft, because Angel Deradoorian is the bassist and co-vocalist in Dirty Projectors. I'm guessing she takes this as a mixed blessing: On the one hand, it's probably a little disheartening to consider that the bulk of her audience are DP fans curious about what else the band members might be up to. On the other hand, she's probably fine with the attention, considering that a near-heartbreaking number of albums just as passionate and lovingly crafted as Mind Raft go totally ignored because of time and space limitations.
Deradoorian's sound is almost the opposite of the Projectors'-- slow, droning, R&B-influenced folk splattered with blue notes and big drums. (Her own flippant but apt description of Mind Raft is "An EP with five gothed-out psych tracks for you to do drugs to, or something." Or something. Listening to the Projectors' convulsive, pointillistic music, it doesn't take a feat of empathy to imagine she needs a breather.) Though the instrumentals are heavy, it's her voice that anchors-- a waxy, seductive instrument that, along with Amber Coffman's, has come to define the Dirty Projectors' sound as much as Dave Longstreth's convulsive squawk. And here, she gets even more room to flaunt its range and character: The sheepish demurrals of indie with the muscle and flutter of genuine R&B; the near-operatic countermelodies of "Weed Jam" unfurling into steamy murmurs on "High Road"; the backing vocals on "Moon" that sound like dissonant Bosnian folk. The lyrics are, to my sensibilities, slight, but that's basically irrelevant-- her voice is often so intoxicating that stepping back from my stoked and thoughtless lizard brain to parse her English feels like a waste of concentration (not to mention insulting to her voice). But the songs wander and churn when it feels like they could develop, and ultimately, it's a record that I'll never mind having on but probably rarely reach for. (Oddly, for all the EP's quiet eclecticism, it's the relatively straightforward blues dirge "Holding Pattern" that I find stickiest.)
Isn't there some cute aphorism about how napkin sketches by innately talented artists are more fascinating than the dedicated brushwork of someone who, on some inaccessible and deep spiritual level, will just never get it? If not, imagine that there is, because I'm going to need for you consider it now. Mind Raft, for its probably good intentions, sounds like sketches from a young musician with obvious talent who hasn't exerted herself just yet. I realize I'm doing some rhetorical hand-wringing here: For all I know, these five songs required a huge amount of effort and will be the closest Deradoorian gets to the godhead-- but I just don't think that's the case. She's 22, very capable, and her stylistic blend is more interesting and unusual than that of plenty of her peers. If you need a hand reconciling the numerical score with that bit of clinical gloss, I'll just say that if I had to review Dave Longstreth's first solo album, 2002's The Graceful Fallen Mango, I don't know that I could confidently say it's all that much better than Deradoorian's is. To the future.
