What we need to hear and what we listen to aren’t always the same thing.
When my marriage was starting to fall apart, it wasn’t because we just discovered new issues in how we related to each other. For some people, there can be a sort of wake up call that might inspire two people to work harder at maintaining a relationship. For most, the moment you have those feelings and recognize them, it’s a culmination of years of disfunction.
“Impregnable Question” is one of the simpler Dirty Projectors songs. The whole Swing Lo Magellan album took a harder turn towards the folksy, eliminating this strange desire to make complicated indie rock sound more like Hot 100 R&B. Built almost on a gospel core, “Impregnable Question” evaluates the precipice of a relationship in collapse. It rolls around the idea of separation and strife until it becomes an idealized pearl, ending with “You’re my love / and I want you in my life.”
I treated this song as a rallying cry for my marriage at the time: here was a track about re-asserting yourself to a relationship and a love that you’re worried is about to be lost. After my divorce, it’s easier to see the cracks in the logic. David Longstreth and Amber Coffman of the Dirty Projectors broke up in 2012, the year this album came out, and “Impregnable Question” is easier parse out as to what it actually is: a frantic grasp at asserting oneself into the life of another after a relationship has already ended.
We all cope with loss in different ways, but the hope is that we can find healing, hope, and understanding for ourselves in that process. Being surrounded by people with caring and insight helps us find those healthier paths.
Clearly that wasn’t the case for David Longstreth.
“Impregnable Question” on Apple Music.
“Impregnable Question” on Spotify.
Advanced Reading
The funniest thing I’ve ever heard is the opening line to the song “Keep Your Name” by Dirty Projectors. In the deepest, dumbest version of 15 year old poetry, David Longstreth, through a slowed down vocal effect, sings:
“I don’t know why you abandoned me…”
There’s a bluntness to that line, an air of vulnerability, but the core of it is telling: a self-centering expression of despair that alienates the listener while it’s intention is to do the opposite. In all the ways that Longstreth could examine this thought, he’s unable to empathize with the person he’s addressing it to — there’s certainly a reason this person has, and yet, Longstreth can’t process that this reason isn’t something he’s a willing participant in. In just the first half of this opening line, Longstreth creates an accidental portrait of himself as selfish and difficult.
The idea of being abandoned, well… an unwanted child is abandoned at a fire house front step. A troublesome dog is abandoned on the street. A shopping cart on the website Zappos is abandoned with three new pairs of running shoes when the user logs off realizing they really don’t want to start exercising. Amber Coffman didn’t abandon David Longstreth: she just dumped his ass.
Other lines in the song are even more troublesome: “You were my soul and my partner,” “What I want from art is truth, what you want is fame,” “Your heart is saying clothing line / My body said Naomi Klein, No Logo.” Immediately, in a few scattered lines, Amber Coffman is painted as a money hungry, celebrity hungry shell (which troublingly frames Longstreth’s foray into co-writing and producing a Solange album or contributing to a Paul McCartney, Rhianna, and Kanye West track as purely art for the sake of art).
The absurdity of the song is echoed throughout the album. In a brief history, Coffman and Longstreth dated and were bandmates from around 2007-2012, then, as their relationship ended, continued working on projects together. Coffman began writing a solo record, and Longstreth, in 2015, even produced it. Her album was released in 2017, the same year as this Dirty Projectors album, and on paper, the working relationship seemed civil.
That is, until you start looking into the swath of interviews Longstreth was granted on his media blitz. In a lengthy feature piece published by the New York Times Magazine:
“I want us to be close friends, and to work together again,” he said. But “things between us,” he noted unhappily, “have been better.”
This was published on February 16th, 2017, just five days before Dirty Projectors self-titled album was released, and months before Amber Coffman’s City of No Reply was released in June. In a March interview in Rolling Stone, Coffman said
“It was never my intention or wish to leave the band or end my friendship with Dave,” she said. “It was a surprise to me to learn last September about his album plans, the content, timing, use of the band name, etc.”
The timing. Writing for Coffman’s solo album started in 2012, after the release of Dirty Projectors’ critically-praised-but-failure-to-break-into-mainstream-pop album, Swing Lo Magellan, which brought enough tension to the band that it brought tension into Coffman and Longstreth’s relationship. They reconciled, and in 2014, the two began working together on Coffman’s album, which Longstreth produced at his studio in 2015. Almost two years later, in the run up to her debut solo album, she learns that Longstreth has written and recorded and planned to release an album under the Dirty Projectors’ name, with a release date designed to undercut her.
Only, that’s not quite right. It isn’t an interview with Amber Coffman. It’s a news piece, based on a statement Coffman drafted as part of a press release. In this time period, Dave Longstreth has extensive feature pieces in New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Crack Magazine, Dazed Magazine, Spin.com, all with headlines that include words like “wrenching breakup,” “heartbreak,” “depression,” etc.
In contrast, with a more targeted internet search, you can find Coffman interviews in Nylon, Vice, and The Guardian. The piece in The Guardian is especially forward:
Coffman had no intention to reveal any of this until she learned that Longstreth was releasing a new Dirty Projectors album this February. It traced their relationship’s arc, and oozed bitterness.
In conversation, Coffman is neither hostile nor evasive, but clearly despairing – hesitant to say more and stoke unwanted drama, and frustrated that her debut album is now a gossip item. But although it is mostly focused on her recovery, City of No Reply also has its share of scathing moments. She frequently addresses an emotionally aloof guy, and asks: “How’s playing it safe working out for you?” on Do You Believe? Isn’t she fuelling the fire? She falters. “If his last record hadn’t been what it was, and mine came out, and none of our personal business was out there, I don’t know that people would be reading into things as much.”
There’s two narratives that are being threaded here, separately. David Longstreth is a heartbroken musical genius who needs to be profiled and is now channelling his inner self into his music now, fully, and Amber Coffman is cautious, frustrated, and just wanting her album to be evaluated on its own. Through these interviews, I wonder, which is the person wanting truth from art, and which is the one wanting fame?
Is it then remotely a surprise that every one of those David Longstreth features was written by a man, and every Amber Coffman interview was conducted by a woman?