Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca took me a while to get into. The first time I listened to it, intrigued as I was by opener Cannibal Resource, all the good will that track built in me was dispelled immediately by Temecula Sunrise‘s endless repetitions and time signature changes which I found to be nothing short of headache inducing the first five or so times I heard it. The rest of the album from there didn’t do me much better.

It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth listen to the album (which were over the course of a month in which I spent more time than necessary wondering if I should just give up, stop listening to it, and chalk it up as a casualty of art-damage) that I started to finally get it. I had a similar experience with this year’s Grizzly Bear, so maybe I knew this was going to happen. By my eighth listen I was pretty much in love with the majority of the album.

I was excited to see them live. The opening riff to Cannibal Resource makes me want to jizz in my pants every time I hear it. Not even counting that, the album as a whole is a technical masterpiece, with all sorts of weird starts and stops, vocal hiccups and warbles between precise notes, time signature changes… I mean, come on, Dirty Projectors have to be absolutely stupendous live, right?

It sounds like I am gearing up to tear them apart, and I kind of am. Maybe it had something to do with playing two shows about two hours apart, or it was Halloween, or Dave Longstreth’s silly costume (Yosemite Sam, maybe?) with his giant cowboy hat, but dang did Longstreth’s guitar playing not measure up to the record at all.

The biggest offense was that Cannibal Resource‘s opening riff was basically non-existent. The crowd was cheering a little bit, which was enough throughout the show to completely wash out the ability to hear the band at the Jensen Rec Center, but even through that what he played sounded nothing like that distinctive (forgive me) “twang twang twang chkkkkwaaahhhHHHH twang twang twang”.

I was sad. Earlier in the day my sister—who’s married, has two kids, voted for McCain, and is in love with Coldplay and seems to know nothing else about music aside from the name Coldplay—was talking to me about how great Coldplay is live and how “unlike most bands they’re actually better live than they are on the album.” I was taken aback by this statement, because I couldn’t remember the last time I saw a band live who weren’t better than their album. Maybe I only go to good shows, but most acts are better live, aren’t they? Isn’t the live show the most important moment for a band to show off their goods? Who’s going to waste that opportunity by being shitty?

I’m not trying to say Dirty Projectors were shitty live—merely that Longstreth’s guitar playing seems to benefit a lot from containment within a studio. Everything else about the show was pretty much excellent. The trio of female vocalists were absolutely flawless, their voices combining with, or in some cases, contrasting against, each other. They played everything I wanted to hear, and my girlfriend enjoyed the show quite a bit.

Maybe I wasn’t listening with the right ears, but it seems that the only weak link in the Dirty Projectors’ live performance on Halloween was front-man Dave Longstreth himself, who seemed to have a hard time with his guitar and, rarely but still on occasion, with his voice. Perhaps he is merely a victim of his own genius, unable to live up to the high standard he set for himself on the record.

It was still an enjoyable show, but I wouldn’t recommend seeing them live to a non-fan. There’s nothing Dirty Projectors can possibly do live to make you understand their music more than just listening to Bitte Orca ten or so times will do for you.

Also, watching a little white girl belt out Stillness is the Move was pretty much awesome. That chick has some serious pipes on her.