Destroyer's Kaputt
Nine albums in, it would be completely reasonable to expect Destroyer - né Dan Bejar - to have fallen into self-caricature. After all, Bejar is given to bombastic metaphors, obscure references, and the type of overreaching that can be dismissed as aimless rambling.1 His lyrical tendencies are matched by an offstage persona that seems at odds with an increasingly convivial indie rock scene. Bejar has never been afraid to voice his distaste. In most interviews, he comes off as crotchety and finicky and you can usually sense the interviewers' reluctance to rankle him. You don't expect self-indulgence this deep-seated to have nine lives. And on his last album, 2008's Trouble in Dreams, there were signs that Destroyer was dying. TID seemed uninspired and too self-satisfied. It played as a death knell.
But Destroyer's genius lives on. With Kaputt, Destroyer has made the first great album of 2011 (and named it after a book that he has never read). Kaputt is typical Bejar: confident, precise, tangled and accomplished. In an intriguing turn, Bejar deserts the last record's generic Montreal indie rock sound2 to embrace the musical signifiers of easy listening. Plasticized drums, 80's pop synthesizers, and woozy saxophones all make appearances, sounding more infectious than you remember on the many intros and outros. Destroyer has also turned off his verbal fireworks. Mostly gone are his tra-la-las and tumbling syllables. Instead, the whole album is sung in a disaffected croon with little emphasis given to even the most arresting lyrics.
Thematically, however, he remains preoccupied with the same things (music and musicians, language, and America) and they serve as the fodder for some of his most gnomic lyrics yet. On "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker," Bejar crafts an impressively circumspect song about race in America evoking the brown paper bag test, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Kara Walker's silhouettes, Obama and so much I have yet to untangle. All sung in a voice so cold that it could be wet.
1. Try this excerpt from Destroyer's Rubies standout "3000 Flowers":
I was Clytemnestra on a good day,
Dispensing wisdom to the uninitiated,
The initiates brought out in tumbrels, shadowed by the dawn.
(Shadowed by the dawn, shadowed by the dawn.)
2. Think guitar-heavy, rhythm-light and slightly twee. Not the Springsteen-aping of Arcade Fire, but the jangly asides of Wolf Parade or the thankfully, now-defunct Unicorns.
Nine albums in, it would be completely reasonable to expect Destroyer - né Dan Bejar - to have fallen into self-caricature. After all, Bejar is given to bombastic metaphors, obscure references, and the type of overreaching that can be dismissed as aimless rambling.1 His lyrical tendencies are matched by an offstage persona that seems at odds with an increasingly convivial indie rock scene. Bejar has never been afraid to voice his distaste. In most interviews, he comes off as crotchety and finicky and you can usually sense the interviewers' reluctance to rankle him. You don't expect self-indulgence this deep-seated to have nine lives. And on his last album, 2008's Trouble in Dreams, there were signs that Destroyer was dying. TID seemed uninspired and too self-satisfied. It played as a death knell.
But Destroyer's genius lives on. With Kaputt, Destroyer has made the first great album of 2011 (and named it after a book that he has never read). Kaputt is typical Bejar: confident, precise, tangled and accomplished. In an intriguing turn, Bejar deserts the last record's generic Montreal indie rock sound2 to embrace the musical signifiers of easy listening. Plasticized drums, 80's pop synthesizers, and woozy saxophones all make appearances, sounding more infectious than you remember on the many intros and outros. Destroyer has also turned off his verbal fireworks. Mostly gone are his tra-la-las and tumbling syllables. Instead, the whole album is sung in a disaffected croon with little emphasis given to even the most arresting lyrics.
Thematically, however, he remains preoccupied with the same things (music and musicians, language, and America) and they serve as the fodder for some of his most gnomic lyrics yet. On "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker," Bejar crafts an impressively circumspect song about race in America evoking the brown paper bag test, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Kara Walker's silhouettes, Obama and so much I have yet to untangle. All sung in a voice so cold that it could be wet.
1. Try this excerpt from Destroyer's Rubies standout "3000 Flowers":
I was Clytemnestra on a good day,
Dispensing wisdom to the uninitiated,
The initiates brought out in tumbrels, shadowed by the dawn.
(Shadowed by the dawn, shadowed by the dawn.)
2. Think guitar-heavy, rhythm-light and slightly twee. Not the Springsteen-aping of Arcade Fire, but the jangly asides of Wolf Parade or the thankfully, now-defunct Unicorns.
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