“I want to sleep with no dreams,” Dave Longstreth croons from within a shapeshifting windstorm of electronics, acoustic guitars and strings. “I want to be dead.” It’s one of many bone-chilling moments on Dirty Projectors’ seventh LP: a heartbreaking, musically manic postmortem of his relationship with former bandmate Amber Coffman. Longstreth probed the limits of experimental rock on previous albums but, here, he explores uncharted territory: his shattered soul. Dirty Projectors is an often painful, voyeuristic listen, as he lays bare unfiltered heartbreak (electro-soul ballad “Keep Your Name,” which samples Coffman’s voice via the Projectors’ “Impregnable Question”), recounts being blindsided by love at first sight (sax-scorched, psych-folkfreak-out “Up in Hudson”) and becomes sucked into a jazzy “Death Spiral.” But Longstreth’s misery is cathartic, as he exorcises vividly personal details—seeing Coffman perform at New York’s Bowery Ballroom (“Hudson”), feeling the “black hole” of a lonely October morning in bed (“Little Bubble”)—amid his sprawling soundscapes. That palpable pain pushes Longstreth to new musical realms: rapping, squelching low-end, orchestral flourishes, clanging auxiliary percussion (courtesy of Mauro Refosco), Fender Rhodes grooves, Auto-Tune blasts. It’s challenging stuff, even for Dirty Projectors. “Winner Take Nothing,” with its meandering arrangement detours, takes a handful of listens to absorb in full. After bare-knuckle boxing our hearts for over a half hour, Longstreth ends the LP with a healing mantra: “It’s gonna get better,” he reminds himself, encouraged by a gospel Hammond organ. Battlescarred but buzzing with creative vigor, he marches forward.