After the supposed avant-garde accessibility and commercial breakthrough of 2009's Bitte Orca -- an album that saw Solange Knowles cover the R&B-tinged and hook-laden single "Stillness in the Move" -- Swing Lo Magellan is the David Longstreth-led Dirty Projectors' sixth studio album. Proclaiming that this is "an album of songs, an album of songwriting," and despite the absence of long-term collaborator Angel Deradoorian, Longstreth manages to produce his most tender yet anthemic record to date. Spending nearly 12 months recording and writing in an isolated house in the rural solitude of Delaware County, New York, Longstreth forged intimacy and spontaneity, and each track bursts with ideas and warmth, but that's not to suggest that the fidgetiness and crashing rhythms of their previous material are not there.
