DIRTY PROJECTORS - Bitte Orca

It still seems a bit weird to almost burn out on a record before it's even hit the shelves, but when an album this involving leaks two months before release and its fans are as voracious as Dirty Projectors', you run that risk. Undaunted, Bitte Orca's a strong enough set to hold up as what feels to this writer like the first leftfield indie-rock blockbuster of the year, what with Animal Collective not technically rocking these days (with few guitars to be heard as of late, in the studio at least) and Grizzly Bear's showmanship much more of a slowburn than the DPs'. By this point, you should know what you're in for here--the Malian R&B jams that arguably give many of Bamako's leading lights some stiff competition; Dave Longstreth's coy 'confession' to living "in a new construction home...on a strip beyond the dealership, yeah", before bulldozing down said suburbs, shifting shuffle meter and all, on personal fave "Temecula Sunrise"; the wall of wailed harmonies that particularly wallop at the mid-way drop-in break to title-refraining synthed-out scribbly centrepiece "Useful Chamber"--and summer for some of us music lovers has finally, truly arrived.