This came out in 2005 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
In our dumbed-down, homogenised culture, true individuality isn’t just hard to come by, it’s all but unheard of.
Well, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Getty Address, the latest from eccentric singer-composer David Longstreth and his Dirty Projectors, is a bizarre, esoteric concept-album opera about the Aztecs, Cortez the killer, cultural imperialism and, um, Eagles’ Don Henley. I don’t really have the space to explain how they all link up — and even if I did, I’m not entirely confident I could. But I can say this: Between his mournful falsetto vocals, indecipherable lyrics that often lapse into gibberish, boundless orchestral influences and splice-and-dice tape manipulations, Yale student Longstreth sounds sorta like Tiger Lillies redoing the soundtrack to Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels. Love it or loathe it, you sure can’t call it dumbed-down.
