BY ZACHARY HERRMANN

To put the Dirty Projectors' Wednesday night set into perspective, it must be noted that at least on paper, the circumstances were not ideal. As luck would have it, the Projectors came into Philadelphia with a lot of competition - across town, the Phillies were on their way to clinching their second consecutive World Series berth.

But for all the scattered bits of Phillies gear and - judging from the younger, college-aged crowd - presumed access to mobile devices around the venue, the audience was completely entranced. Despite the Troc's fairly awful sound, Dave Longstreth and Co. were able to go acoustic on several occasions, no small feat considering the setting.

During "Two Doves", Longstreth (on an amplified acoustic) and Angel Deradoorian (vocals only, dress strap slipping as if to indicate just how naked the performance felt) played to complete silence. It was exactly the sort of ethereal moment that, under most bar-chattering circumstances, is impossible for anyone to achieve in a rock club.

So with all this in mind - namely the Projectors' ability to captivate an audience when the attention very well could have been elsewhere that - the question simply must be posed: Why the hell did the set only last 55 minutes?

For a matter of comparison, opening band Givers (whom Longstreth must have met at The David Byrne Appreciation Society or something like that, which is no discredit to either), gave around 45 minutes. The break in between the bands was almost as long as the headliners' actual set.

That's right - the Projectors came on at 9:37 pm, I was out of the venue, heels touching Arch Street by 10:36 (brief encore break included). Granted this is the indie rock circuit, where sub-90 minute sets are pretty standard, but c'mon. Had the baseball game meant that much, we would have stayed home.

Not that the Projectors' weren't impressive for the time they did grace the stage. When they pulled out all stops on "Useful Chamber", the set closer, the three sirens (Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle) and drummer Brian Mcomber sounded like a Seven Nation Army bearing down on the city, read to take no prisoners.

And that was before Longstreth's guitar kicked back in, which must have put a fresh crack or two in the Troc's spanking new ceiling paint job.

As with too many groups in too many venues though, the Projectors needed a good three or four songs to adjust their sound (in this case, that's about one-third of the set). Those beautiful vocal harmonies on "Cannibal Resource" fell victim to the boomy, overblown PA system, and sound issues or not, the end jam to "Temecula Sunrise" briefly became a dilapidated mess.

The angular, syncopation of the band's much ballyhooed Bitte Orca comes off smoother in the studio, far looser and meandering live. Coffman nailed every inflection of the album's seminal pop number, "Stillness Is The Move", but the live replication of the song's riff felt a little off. 

She and her two other female Projectors are stunning performers, but without the exactness of the riff and drum loop combo, "Stillness Is The Move" loses a good deal of its impact (though it still got quite a few crowd members moving and grinding). On the bright side, it was the one song where you could locate Deradoorian's synthesizer, which was completely drowned out the rest of the night.

Surprisingly, the acoustic songs faired best. Rise Above's "Police Story" featured more of the band's vocal acrobatics, perhaps the one element of the band's oeuvre that came through clearest. By the time "Two Doves" rolled around, followed by the band's first live crack at "The Bride" (with Nat Baldwin on upright bass), everything finally gelled. Even without David Byrne lending his voice to "Knotty Pine" (as he does on the Dark Was The Night compilation), the song captured the Projectors' at their most jubilant, in tight unity and matching the hype in ever way imaginable.  

So there's no question as to their talent as a live group, or versatility. And as for longevity - apparently the follow night's show in Washington D.C. landed closer to the 75-minute mark.

There's no denying how nice it was getting back to the car, turning on the radio and catching Shane Victorino's two-run homer in the bottom of the 6th inning. But that possibility wasn't on my mind when the Projectors' closed out the night with new song "When The World Comes To An End."

What did cross my mind was how incredible and other-worldly Coffman and Dekle's vocal tradeoff was. And how Longstreth could stand to take a guitar solo every now and then. But mostly, how great it would have been if the Projectors' had done more than a one-song encore and sent us out with something to really gab about.

In Philadelphia that night, almost everybody got what they wanted.

[Photo Credit: Sarah Cass]