The Dirty Projectors "Useful Chamber," from their 2009 lp Bitte Orca, replicates the sensation one might experience inside an enormous clothes dryer cycling in slow motion; there is a wicked tossing about, but there is a feeling of prolonged suspension. The humidity makes you shiver instead of sweat. The heat makes you sleepy, and the fatigue makes you giddy, and the giddiness arouses your libido, and the longing finds the hottest space inside of you and melts slowly like a thick pad of oozing butter on a biscuit, and then the desire becomes a low comfortable electric buzz between your eyes; suddenly the dryer stops, and you're sinking into a mountain of soft, warm fabric, and there is nothing to feel but complete and total contentedness with the universe. I would hesitate to call "Useful Chamber" epic, clocking in at six and a half minutes, but the song runs the gamut from mellow electronica to noisy industrial. If the arrangement of the song were a pill, one would have to break it in half to swallow it. "Useful Chamber" is experimental rock at its finest.
The song opens with a hypnotic electric drum pulse complimented by a synthesized string arrangement, and does not deviate from this arrangement throughout the first verse. The lyrics are mild and poetic: "She is an emerald in a shining, shining winter / Rosette in a snow globe / Write it up, clean and gold / I spread love." Abruptly, the song shifts, and the instrumentation turns acoustic: a picked folksy guitar arrangement augmented with a heavy distorted crunch at the beginning of each measure to build tension. Behind this, a quiet chorus of female voices sing feathery harmonies. There is another abrupt change; a drum break serving the same empty purpose as Ringo's drum break in "Birthday," but significantly subdued. There are a few understated vocal chants before the song explodes into something entirely and vastly different from where it should be going.
Somehow, we find ourselves in the world of rift rock. A pounding yet understated drum kit smashes and splashes behind the repeating riff. Over this, the album's title is sung: "Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte / Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte." Above the riff and behind the vocal, a looped electric guitar sounding very much like something Andy Summers of The Police would have played trickles down between the rocks and hard places of the riff and arrangement. Then the song cycles back to its place of origin.
The hypnotic sequenced drum beat returns, but this time instead of being washed over by a synthesized string arrangement, The Dirty Projector's trio of female vocalist harmonize the string arrangement: a clever reintroduction to the main theme. The performance is spot-on and clean, and thick like wet red paint running down a white wall. Behind the lead vocal a subtle acoustic guitar track is heard, reminiscent of the arrangement after the first verse, and at the conclusion of the verse, there is an abrupt pause, then the Summeresque guitar repeats, isolated until the riff rock returns, pauses to make way for the folk guitar again, soaring female harmonies, then the chanting of Bitte Orca over the riff, culminating in a noisy finale which ultimately hits a brick wall and dies instead of ending properly.
Upon the first listen I didn't particularly like "Useful Chamber;" it was more like I enjoyed it. I tried squeezing it into a few different playlists and mixed CDs: impossible. Finally, it found a home at the end of a playlist, preceded by Dosh's "Mpls Rock and Roll" from the '06 album, The Lost Take. After repeated listening, "Useful Chamber" went from enjoyable to intriguing. It takes multiple listens to completely absorb the track, and it's an easy track to return to even if the first few listens don't hook you because its aftertaste resonates on your palate and becomes a stalactite which tickles the buds of your tongue until you have to scratch that itch. And I'm still scratching.
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