Dirty Projectors, David Longstreth & s t a r g a z e Song Of The Earth
Dirty Projectors's Song Of The Earth stages David Longstreth's most ambitious reach yet, a 24-part orchestral chamber-pop suite that pits pastoral beauty against climate anxiety and societal critique. Critics agree the record contains luminous moments - particularly “Blue of Dreaming”, “Summer Light” and “Raven Ascends” - that distill Longstreth's tension between fragility and urgency, even as the whole sometimes splinters under its own invention. Across four professional reviews the album earned a 67.5/100 consensus score, a sign that reviewers found the project provocative and uneven in equal measure.
The critical consensus highlights recurring themes: orchestral experimentation and classical crossover, Gaia consciousness and environmental crisis, and a contrast of beauty and discord that animates the best songs on Song Of The Earth. Reviewers consistently praised tracks where strings and breath instruments unclench - “Blue of Dreaming” and “Raven Ascends” emerge as tender anchor points, while “Summer Light” and collaborative pieces like “Twin Aspens” and “At Home” register as standout songs for their moments of harmonic clarity. At the same time, critics note that collage-heavy pieces such as “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” or “Gimme Bread” can overwhelm narrative focus, making parts of the record feel diffuse.
Taken together, professional reviews suggest Song Of The Earth is worth hearing for its daring orchestration and striking high points, even if its sprawling ambition will divide listeners; the collection reads as an urgent, occasionally fractious meditation on interdependence, fatherhood, and a world in peril. Below are the full reviews that flesh out how and why certain tracks rise above the album's glorious clutter.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Summer Light
1 mention
"the album starts well with "Summer Light," where the female singers set the template"— Pitchfork
Blue of Dreaming
1 mention
"The song " Blue of Dreaming", a lullaby David Longstreth wrote for his newborn daughter, is tender."— PopMatters
Raven Ascends
1 mention
"Nowhere is this harmoniousness more tender than on instrumental pieces "Spiderweb at Water’s Edge" and "Raven Ascends""— The Line of Best Fit
the album starts well with "Summer Light," where the female singers set the template
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 5 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
In her measured, observant tone Elisabeth Woronzoff frames Dirty Projectors’ Song of the Earth as a 24-part reckoning where the best tracks, like “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” and “Blue of Dreaming”, crystallize Longstreth’s tension between destruction and beauty. The review highlights “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” for its foreboding soundscape and urgent chorus, making it a top track on the album, while “Blue of Dreaming” is praised as a tender lullaby and one of the best songs on Song of the Earth. Woronzoff’s voice balances admiration and critique, noting that despite avoiding a simple "climate change opera" label the record dwells insistently in that thematic tension. Overall she presents the album as daring, sincere, and rewarding with repeated listens, urging engagement rather than passive consumption.
Key Points
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The best song is “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” for its foreboding soundscape and urgent chorus that crystallize the album’s tension.
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The album’s core strengths are ambitious orchestration, thematic depth around climate and coexistence, and emotional range from tenderness to societal critique.
Themes
Critic's Take
David Longstreth makes a bold, sometimes bewildering leap on Song of the Earth, and the best songs - notably “Summer Light” and “At Home” - show why this experiment can work. The reviewer's ear loves the album's "natural, flattering sections of imitative counterpoint" and the thrill when the ensemble locks in, but it also frets over moments like “Gimme Bread” and “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” where excess and collage overwhelm clarity. The result is an album whose high points feel vividly rewarding in ways that answer the question of the best tracks on Song of the Earth, even if the whole hour often feels splintered and wearing.
Key Points
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The best song, "Summer Light," succeeds because its imitative counterpoint and female voices provide the album’s clearest, most rewarding moments.
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The album's core strength is its inventive orchestration and dense ensemble writing, even when those qualities produce fragmentation rather than unity.
Themes
Critic's Take
Dirty Projectors' Song Of The Earth feels like a fragile Eden, its best songs locating beauty in the brink of collapse. The instrumental “Spiderweb at Water’s Edge” and “Raven Ascends” are where the album's harmony is most tender, Longstreth playfully humming with Patrick Shiroishi’s plaintive sax and s t a r g a z e’s strings. Yet the bracing directness of “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One” forces the thesis into view, bold and polarising, which means the best tracks are those that balance lyricism with that urgent edge. Overall the best songs on Song Of The Earth are the ones that make the pastoral feel precarious and necessary - both intimate and unignorable.
Key Points
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The best songwork balances pastoral orchestration with urgent thematic bluntness, notably in the instrumentals and the title-referencing protest song.
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The album’s strengths are its orchestral arrangements and the tension between beauty and ecological precarity.
Themes
Critic's Take
David Longstreth takes a dizzying left turn on Song Of The Earth, where jazzy orchestral improvisations and baroque pop collide with climate-minded themes. The review salutes daring moments like “At Home” and the Mount Eerie collaboration “Twin Aspens” as instances of shimmering beauty amid a sprawling, confounding 24-track suite. It warns that fans might find the set too diffuse or hectic, yet cannot deny the record's sheer ambition. In short, the best tracks on Song Of The Earth are those that let the strings breathe and Longstreth's voice find room to astonish - notably “At Home” and “Twin Aspens”.
Key Points
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The best song is one that embraces orchestral space and surprise, with “Twin Aspens” and “At Home” exemplifying that quality.
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The album's core strengths are its ambition, orchestral experimentation, and willingness to take radical stylistic turns.