This time next month, Angel Deradoorian will be a rock star. Dirty Projectors, for which she plays bass and sings, is set to release an album June 9 that will surely be their breakthrough. And I know you've heard about their collaborations with the likes of David Byrne and Björk. Well, okay -- maybe Bitte Orca (Domino) won't make Dirty Projectors the next Radiohead. But the band is certainly bound for Animal Collective- and Arcade Fire-like levels of popularity.
All of which is to say that in a few months we may not still be able to see Deradoorian play to a hundred or so friends and admirers packed into a basement venue like Cake Shop. The event was a record release party for her new EP, Mind Raft (Lovepump United), which had just hit stores that morning. Her Dirty Projectors comrades clustered supportively at the front of the stage; the band's singer/songwriter Dave Longstreth grinned through the entire set like a proud papa. And, as it turned out, Deradoorian's backing band was a real family affair: Her brother Aram played the drums, and two dear friends covered bass and keyboards.
Deradoorian's music isn't terribly similar to Dirty Projectors. In place of the bright, symphonic sounds that band makes, we get moody, layered, sometimes claustrophobic tracks that fall somewhere between PJ Harvey's Nick Cave period and Antony and The Johnsons. Although Deradoorian seemed nervous as all get-out between songs, she never let it interfere with her performance. Her powerful singing, on tracks such as "You Carry the Deed" and "High Road," was especially impressive in an underground cave with notoriously poor acoustics. The set topped out at about 25 minutes, as Deradoorian made it through the entire EP and (I think) one additional song before running out of material. But that was sufficient time to impress this reviewer, to say nothing of the rest of her wrapt audience.
