Dirty Projectors & s t a r g a z e releasing ‘Song of the Earth’ LP ft. Phil Elverum, Steve Lacy, more

David Longstreth‘s Song of the Earth suite premiered in Europe in 2022 and last year in North America, and he’s now announced it’ll be released as a new album. Performed by Dirty Projectors and s t a r g a z e and featuring Mount Eerie‘s Phil Elverum, Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and author David Wallace-Wells, Song of the Earth is due out on April 4 via Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in the US, and Transgressive in the UK. See the cover art and tracklist below.

“The need for this music arose in a few days in Fall of 2020, when T was pregnant with our daughter,” Longstreth says. “The fires in California were insane, as they are right now. We got on an empty flight to Juneau. It was the middle of the pandemic; no one was flying. The irony of escaping the fires by burning more carbon.” Upon arriving, he describes finding “The beauty and restorative cool of Alaska. A muddy bald eagle sitting on the shale stone bank of a coastal slough surrounded by rotting carcasses after the salmon run.”

Longstreth adds that Song of the Earth “is not a ‘climate change opera,’” but says he wanted to “find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humor, rage.”

You can hear “Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One,” which, like the title suggests, features the first paragraph of Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth. The accompanying video was shot by David’s brother Jake Longstreth, and you can watch it below.

David also recently shared an EP of David Berman covers in honor of what would have been Berman’s birthday on January 4, when he played the Los Angeles DCBday show. On his new Substack, he writes:

over the weekend i had the pleasure of participating in a show in los angeles celebrating the life and work of david berman, the poet and songwriter behind the bands silver jews and purple mountains. it was organized, on the occasion of what would’ve been berman’s 58th birthday (1/4/2025), by the folks behind jokermen, the best podcast on the internet for deep dives into the oeuvres of the deep divers (by which i mean great songwriters). ana nersessian, who i went to school with twenty years ago and hadn’t seen in forever, read harmony korine’s 2019 eulogy for david. it was beautiful and wrenching and mind-blowing, and if it exists anywhere on the internet i encourage you to seek it out.

i played a short set of three favorite DCB numbers — guard my bed, black and brown blues, and (need to) random rules. next morning i tumbled out of bed straight into a couple microphones so i could record ‘em.. so please enjoy this, my belated DCB birthday covers EP, for streaming or free download.

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DIRTY PROJECTORS & S T A R G A Z E – SONG OF THE EARTH TRACKLIST
1. Summer Light
2. Gimme Bread
3. At Home
4. Circled in Purple
5. Our Green Garden
6. Walk the Edge (with Anastasia Coope)
7. Opposable Thumb
8. More Mania
9. Spiderweb at Water’s Edge (with Patrick Shiroishi)
10. Mallet Hocket
11. So Blue the Lake
12. Dancing on our Eyelids
13. Same River Twice
14. Armfuls of Flowers (feat. Steve Lacey)
15. Twin Aspens (feat. Mount Eerie & Patrick Shiroishi)
16. Uninhabitable Earth, Paragraph One
17. Kyrie / About My Day
18. Shifting Shalestones
19. Appetite (with Tim Bernardes)
20. Bank On (with Portraits Of Tracy)
21. Paper Birches, Whole Scroll
22. Raven Ascends (with Patrick Shiroishi)
23. Blue of Dreaming (with Ayoni)
24. Raised Brow