“The thing about bands like Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, and Deerhoof,” a friend said to me recently, “is that I only like them on paper. They’re experimental, they’re pushing boundaries – but I can’t really listen to the music.”

I see her point. To the uninitiated, Dirty Projectors’ music is a haphazard mashing of a capella harmonies, disjointed guitar lines, and angular rhythms. Amber Coffman’s vocalizing grates as much as it croons, and David Longstreth’s falsetto gets old fast. (Take note, bands: this is true of falsetto in general.) It’s near-impossible to make out melodies; the second the notes settle into a pattern, they’re interrupted by an unlikely guitar figure or meter change. What a mess, right?

…But this is why Bitte Orca is so amazing. While any one of these “faults” would doom an ordinary album, Dirty Projectors’ newest gets under your skin because of what’s wrong. The twists and turns that dominate this album are not a sign of schizophrenic songwriting; rather, they shock the listener out of musical stasis. From the fractal-like variations of “Temecula Sunrise” to the slapped-together refrain of “Remade Horizon,” each track is carefully considered, reconsidered, deconstructed, and put together as something new.

Longstreth’s break-and-build method of composition means that many songs are written in several parts. Bitte Orca’s greatest example is “Useful Chamber” – which, in my opinion, should have won out over the straightforward, R&B-influenced “Stillness Is The Move” for single release. Starting out as a slow, ebbing synth line, the song goes through a number of seemingly unrelated themes and textures before everything falls together in the final minute. The overall effect is both stunning and nuanced; after several weeks on repeat, there’s still some new line or note to be heard for the first time.

So, yes, Bitte Orca is complex and still sits well in the “experimental” category. But this intricacy doesn’t stand in the way of creating a truly powerful album – because for all of his formal training (hello fellow music-major), David Longstreth’s complex songs speak to simple human experiences: longing, passion, discovery, joy.

Not to mention, they’re damn catchy.