Dirty Projectors Tackle Madison Square Garden for CMJ

Madison Square Garden seems like an odd place for a CMJ show to take place, but indeed such was the site for the Dirty Projectors, who landed an opening spot for Phoenix on Wednesday night. While they didn't have a capacity crowd, Dave Longstreth and company filled the large room with songs like the Eastern influenced 'Stillness is the Move' and 'Cannibal Resource,' which, along with the National's 'Conversation 16,' reigns as one of the best songs of recent memories to detail problems surrounding cannibalism.

Still, it's not surprising to hear a band like the Dirty Projectors in a room as prestigious as the Garden. Besides writing oddball, angular songs that flirt with the directionless, they're killer vocalists. They've played to much bigger audiences at large festivals, but the open-air nature of those lets those voices wander into the sky. A large room like the Garden does well in magnifying that aspect of their sound.

Any of Wednesday's attendees who had previously seen Dirty Projectors most likely caught them at a smaller venue where they were able to get a close look at what the band was doing. But the thing is, with this band you don't need to be close -- they're not "arena rock" by any definition, but their performance showed that they can still have the same impact, no matter the space. For example, the Longstreth-driven electro-rock 'Useful Chamber' and Amber Coff ballad 'Two Doves' demonstrated that, like always, they concentrate more on timing and harmonies and avoid moments of flash and grandeur. They simply let the songs speak for themselves, which makes a thing like setting become irrelevant.