At the end of the touring on Bitte, looking back on all that stuff, I feel really proud of having written that music and of us for having really played awesomely on those tours. David Longstreth Read Quote
I’d always tended to regard song lyrics as sort of a bastard medium because they’re subjugated under the music. If you were to regard them as poetry, it would be bad, embarrassing, confessional poetry – a lot of the lyrics I love. David Longstreth Read Quote
The more songs I’ve written, the more I’ve grown interested in telling a story. When I first began, I had this list of opaque phrases where you can make of it what you want. David Longstreth Read Quote
There’s been no two Dirty Projectors records that have had the same cast of characters every time. David Longstreth Read Quote
As far as working with Kanye and Solange, that was amazing. After ‘Swing Lo Magellan’, I needed a change. Getting to work in that capacity, writing for other people and working for other people as a writer and as a person who’s not representing it as the front person or whatever – it’s such a different perspective you can get. David Longstreth Read Quote
Kanye has this discursive way of working, getting input from a range of people, that I thought was really cool. David Longstreth Read Quote
I used to feel that musical knowledge and emotional truth-telling were antagonistic. But I was too curious about chords and instruments and recording to stay locked in that mentality. David Longstreth Read Quote
Just like any songwriter, the songs come out of where I am in my life and what I’m doing and who I’m hanging out with and the kind of sounds I’m imagining. I always loved the idea of it evolving in the same way that life changes. David Longstreth Read Quote
What Joanna and Solange and Kanye all had in common was a mental image of what the sound is supposed to be. As a collaborator, my goal has to be to help them get toward that mental image. That was cool. David Longstreth Read Quote
