- Corey Wilkes
Block-party season is officially here as Do-Division Street Fest kicks off Friday; High on Fire, JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, Jimmy Whispers, the O’My’s, Screaming Females, Radar Eyes, and Oozing Wound are just some of the acts playing the three-day blowout. But if you’re looking to beat the heat and still catch some live music, there are plenty of other opportunities throughout the week.
“On his latest solo album, In the Hollows (Western Vinyl), Dirty Projectors bassist Nat Baldwin plants both feet in the art-pop patch, surrounding his billowy, impatient melodies with precise string arrangements that draw on the talents of violist Nadia Sirota, violinist Rob Moose, and cellist Clarice Jensen, all members of young New York chamber group yMusic,” writes Peter Margasak. “Baldwin’s upright bass provides the framework of his tunes, usually with an insistent arco pulse that approximates the minimalist drive of Philip Glass’s music. The polyrhythms of drummer Otto Hauser (also of Vetiver) give the music a more varied feel, falling halfway between the bass’s steady throb and Baldwin’s quavery, liquid singing, which makes him sound a little like his Dirty Projectors bandmate David Longstreth—his voice drifts frequently into a tremulous falsetto, and he elongates certain syllables dramatically. Baldwin wrote this album’s material in 2011 as he trained for a marathon, and some of the songs reflect that focus, either through direct reference in their lyrics or through metaphors or musical techniques that evoke the solitary, rigorous mind-set of a serious runner (that unrelenting bass, for instance).”
