listen | chances r

chances r is a new england boarding school boy band from the 1990s. don't hate. their mostly unheard hit single, a cover of the sex pistols' "anarchy in the uk," is a canned-drum-driven, screwed-"stand by me"-sampling r&b burner that predicts the minimalist, music-less future of rap radio from five years out. but that's not what makes it so remarkable. nor is it the nightmare mariah carey operatics or the hilariously sarcastic refrain of "keep it rollin', keep it rollin'," though both are wonderful.

the true value of this chances r track (recorded circa '97), is its implication that lead singer dave longstreth has always been dirty projectors. it is a breadcrumb pointing back to the fact that, despite what today's widespread innovate-til-you-break ambition (and by innovate i mean repackage) would have you believe, dirty projectors' alarming, otherworldly queerness is no gimmick. no strange-for-the-sake-of-strangeness. even when they were deconstructing black flag -- on its surface a wildly gimmicky maneuver -- they were cashing in on old promises.

it's a revelation that magnifies the amazingness of dirty projectors' against-all-odds pop chart domination and it contextualizes their standing at the top of everybody's album of the year lists. since he was 17, and presumably since long before that, dave longstreth has been a broken-note ululator with a lion king hyena neck and a very specific, very personal creative vision for mainstream music. stillness has always been his move. and by stubbornly staying the same, seeing it through, and finally turning the world at large on to his disorienting prism, he has changed by not changing at all -- a rare feat in an era where most of the salsa's made in new york city.

dave longstreth, via stereogum: "Chances R wasn't my idea, it was my friend Noah Peffer's joke/art project. He had the thought of a fake boy band that packaged the angst of punk for teenage consumption. At the time, it seemed like an outlandish extension of the premise of major label grunge ... now, with all the '00s between us, it seems shockingly self-evident!! Don't u think?

He made all this fake merchandise and maybe some ads and album covers for Chances R, but he needed a song, so he asked me to write it. It was so fun. I was like 17 or something, and I'd never been to Roxbury, MA before. His friend was chain smoking cigarettes in a tiny apartment that was supposed to be a recording studio, and we went and wrote and recorded it in an afternoon. My friend Pat [Morrissey] did that awesome/bad spoken word.

I haven't heard that song in so long!!"

chances r is dave longstreth, pat morrissey, hg masters and travis pantin.

DOWNLOAD: CHANCES R - ANARCHY IN THE UK [MP3]