DIRTY PROJECTORS, DAVID LONGSTRETH, s t a r g a z e — Song of the Earth

Song of the earth

DIRTY PROJECTORS, DAVID LONGSTRETH, s t a r g a z e

David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, is out April 4, 2025 on Nonesuch/New Amsterdam Records in the US and Transgressive Records in the UK. Performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, the album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells.

Longstreth wrote the first draft of Song of the Earth in six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, feeling disoriented, but also galvanized, by the moment he was in: the pandemic chaos, the “radical psychedelia” of new fatherhood, the novelty of writing for large ensemble. He then spent three years revising, rewriting, rearranging, and recording in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and New York City.

Song of the Earth marks Longstreth’s biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music. It received its US premiere in a March 2024 sold-out performance at Disney Hall in Los Angeles with the LA Philharmonic. Work-in-progress performances also took place between 2022 and 2024 at the Barbican in London, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.

Just as Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above sounds nothing like Damaged—the Black Flag album upon which it’s based—Song of the Earth bears little resemblance to its namesake, Gustav Mahler’s 1908 song-poem Das Lied Von Der Erde. But it is saturated with its themes, feelings and spirit of dissolved contradiction. Gorgeous and dissonant. Epic and personal. Polemic and lullaby. The last thing you’d expect from David Longstreth.
Song of the Earth is orchestral. Instead of guitar solos, there are oboes. Instead of Stratocaster, string quintet. Instead of synths, piano and harpsichord. With a confident but utterly batshit hand, Song of the Earth draws together 150 years of orchestral song. Inspired by the mystical density of Messiaen and the lysergic bagatelles of The Beatles and the Beach Boys circa 1966-67; the intricate micropolyphony of Ligeti and the shaggy-dog chamber arrangements of Veloso and Ben; the glowering maximalism of late Wagner and the towering monoliths of 1970s Glass and Reich. Brian Wilson’s studio-as-instrument ethos abides, but listen for yourself: this … doesn’t quite sound like anything else.
Longstreth wrote the first draft of Song of the Earth in six “manic” weeks for a commission arranged by s t a r g a z e, feeling disoriented, but also galvanized, by the moment he was in: the pandemic chaos, the “radical psychedelia” of new fatherhood, the novelty of writing for large ensemble. He then spent three years revising, rewriting, rearranging, and recording in studios and homes in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and New York City.
Longstreth explains, “The need for this music arose in a few days in Fall of 2020, when T was pregnant with our daughter. The fires in California were insane. We got on an empty flight to Juneau. It was the middle of the pandemic; no one was flying. The irony of escaping the fires by burning more carbon.” He describes what they found upon arrival: “The beauty and restorative cool of Alaska. A muddy bald eagle sitting on the shale stone bank of a coastal slough surrounded by rotting carcasses after the salmon run.”
Across twenty-four songs and sixty-three minutes, Song of the Earth covers the waterfront. It’s got anthems: “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” is a word-for-word setting of paragraph one of David Wallace-Wells 2019 bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth. It’s got ballads: “More Mania” is a cri de cœur at the intersection of ecology and mental health. It’s got bangers: “Bank On” and “Gimme Bread” hammer an oblique critique of extractive industry with dense percussion and brass. It closes with a lullaby: “Blue of Dreaming,” which Longstreth first sang to his newborn daughter, is a primary-color paean to Gaia consciousness.
It gets macro too: the musical amoeba that opens “Summer Light” blooms in “Walk the Edge” and “Shifting Shalestones” before exploding in “Paper Birches.” “Whole Scroll” as a gorgeous hocket for strings, winds, and mallet percussion. A wordless ribbon of saxophone and vocal melody weaves “Spiderweb at Water’s Edge,” “Twin Aspens,” and “Raven Ascending” through three big multi-song suites like a river through a canyon.
Longstreth colors outside the lines with Song of the Earth, making an album that is gloriously WTF, swimming against the algorithmic current with defiant and inpiring grace.

Tracklist
1. Summer Light
2. Gimme Bread
3. At Home
4. Circled in Purple
5. Our Green Garden
6. Walk The Edge
7. Opposable Thumb
8. More Mania
9. Spiderweb At Water’s Edge
10. Mallet Hocket
11. So Blue the Lake
12. Dancing On Our Eyelids
13. Same River Twice
14. Armfuls Of Flowers (feat. Steve Lacy)
15. Twin Aspens (feat. Mount Eerie)
16. Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One
17. Kyrie/About My Day
18. Shifting Shalestones
19. Appetite
20. Bank On
21. Paper Birches, Whole Scroll
22. Raven Ascends
23. Blue Of Dreaming
24. Raised Brow