lexrob.com

In April, a Destroyer demo cassette was unearthed and uploaded on a blog called Seven Ten Twelve.

[8/18/10 Note: Download the Demo Cassette here.]

Six of the nine songs on the tape made their way onto We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge (which I’ve written about). The other three are new songs to us. Like the rest of the tape, they are lo-fi, minimally instrumented, and have an endearingly sloppy quality about them. And, in my opinion, they’re the catchiest, most accessible, and best songs on the tape. And probably the best from the early-Destroyer era, for that matter.

“Dogs Know More Than This” has a laid-back feel to it, with a warm guitar strumming out easy melodies. The lyrics aren’t at the level that we’ve come to expect from Mr. Bejar, but the first phrase of the chorus, “Everything got colossal,” is pretty great.

“Sad Kennedy/Blue Destroyer” has the feel of a more complete song than most of the early offerings. The vocals are a little muddied, which has a nice spiritual/sonic effect, but can be a little frustrating as far as lyrics are concerned.

“Karen is in Rome” is probably my favorite here. It’s one of Bejar’s best early vocal performances, the guitar playing is good and clean (no other instruments are used). It also features an obvious lyrical reference (which are always fun in Destroyer songs), with the refrain, “No wonder Joe shot the woman down.”

When I wrote about Golden Bridge, I compared it to old photos of friends from a time before you knew them, and that’s what this cassette is like, too. However, between its brevity (only nine songs, compared to sixteen on Golden Bridge) and the inclusion of these three songs, the demo cassette is actually pretty satisfying in its own right.

“Okay, fine.” That’s how Trouble In Dreams begins.

“Okay, fine.” A far cry from the “revolution, revolution, revolution” that launched Destroyer. Kind of resigned, actually. And resignation’s a theme throughout Trouble In Dreams.

“Nah, it’s cool.” “The state cut off my arms.” “Foam hands.” “Now it’s gone, and the whole point of everything’s the moving on.” “We live in darkness. The light is a dream.” “Common scars brought us together.” “Hands tied behind your head.” “The leopard of honor speaks to a crowd of the dead.” “I was stuck inside a river’s flow.” “You’ve been wandering around, you’ve been fucking around.” In every song, there are conciliatory lyrics, helpless feelings, acceptance of reality. It’s not that reality is accepted because it’s okay, but because there’s nothing else to accept.

The music on Trouble In Dreams fits somewhere between the free-spirited ease of This Night and the professional rock of Rubies. It’s unapologetically pretty. The singing–bearing in mind that Bejar’s vocals are a matter of taste–is even kind of pretty. In a sense, the revolution is over. The status quo hasn’t changed, the temple has not fallen, but Dan Bejar seems more comfortable in himself than ever. That doesn’t mean complacency; Bejar is still making great music.

“My Favorite Year” captures what I mean. It’s a beautiful song, and its lyrics wistfully blend acceptance with anger…

You, in white, and me, in gray, go well tonight,
so let’s linger here,
this used to be my favorite palm tree–
I was starving in that shit-house, the world–
but now it’s gone,
and the whole point of everything’s the moving on.
[…]
It was a very good year.
And now it’s gone.
You say the whole point of everything’s the moving on,
and I can’t help but feel somewhat opposed to this,
my shit having been torched by fascists,
though, in some small way, we’re all traitors to our own kind.

From Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower:

The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word “baby” in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy, and we all got quiet.

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.

“I feel infinite.”

I’m thinking about rainbows, and how there’s really no appropriate way to talk about them. One could talk scientifically, artistically, emotionally, instinctively, or even religiously. On their own, none of these approaches seems sufficient, and put all together, they seem even cheaper. Talking about a rainbow doesn’t match seeing one. And seeing a rainbow is never just seeing a rainbow. Seeing a rainbow is accompanied by the smell, and the sound of quiet, and the cool feeling in the air after the rain. I cannot critique a rainbow, because a rainbow, and the conditions under which I experience it, makes me feel infinite.

Anyway, if you don’t like rainbows, you can probably substitute something else, like a full moon or the sound of cicadas or the way a newborn baby smells.

How does Destroyer’s Rubies (2006) start off perfectly, and still manage to feel like it keeps making progress throughout? A few minutes into the first track, I think that if Rubies was just “Rubies,” I’d be okay with it. Then, that song ends, and “Your Blues” begins, and every other song follows them, and even though I don’t think any song is better than these two, the album somehow gets better and better. I don’t understand this.

I think I understand one thing about Destroyer’s Rubies very well. I think I understand why I never want to listen to it all over again after “Sick Priest Learns To Last Forever” fades out. I think it’s because the album is beautifully complete and whole and satisfying. It’s like leaving the table after a perfect dinner; it was great, but the last thing I want to do now is eat again.

In looking back on the Destroyer catalog, I’m tempted to skip over Notorious Lightning and Other Works (2005). I’d be justified, since it’s an EP, and didn’t feature any new songs. It revisits six from Your Blues, this time with a full band (and not just any band, but Frog Eyes). It doesn’t readily exhibit progress. At best, it’s a lateral move, and, at worst, it’s a tiny step back. It’s kind of like Destroyer tried to smooth things over with rock n’ roll (and confused Destroyer fans) after the assertion that was Your Blues. Even interpreting it with the latter understanding, hey, it’s just an EP, easy to forgive, and easy to forget.

Obviously, I’m still writing. Because, once again, I am inspired by other people’s criticism. I was reading the reviews of Notorious Lightning, and two stood out. The first is by Hannah Frank, writing for the Yale Herald, and who I cited in my previous post. Hers is a stream of consciousness statement on Notorious Lightning (and, really the entire Destroyer canon–I think Ms. Frank and I could be good friends), and she has an interesting take…

These blustery six songs on this new record render the cold, crisp mathematics of Your Blues somewhat more accessible; where Your Blues was immaculate, maybe hollow, Notorious Lightning and Other Works is prone to flatulence and booger-picking, the kind of organism that displays its organism-ness in all its farty and snotty glory, such that you cannot deny its vivacity, its obnoxiousness, its beauty.

The other review that stood out to me is from a website called BigYawn.net, and it’s not at all positive. BigYawn.net offers a rating of 1.2 out of 10, which seems higher than what the review would suggest. Here I was, wondering whether Notorious Lightning warranted the same regard, value-wise, as the full-length albums. For the BigYawn.net writer, it’s a powerful enough recording to suggest that everyone involved quit their jobs in shame, and that listeners contemplate suicide.

The very strong, very opposite reactions from Hannah Frank of the Yale Herald and jaron of BigYawn.net suggest to me that Notorious Lightning is more powerful than I’d suspected. My own reaction, though, can be found in my earlier suggestion–that this is an offering made to smooth things over, a defensive tactic. And Destroyers ought never to be on the defensive.

The defense is strong, though. As I listen to the EP, the beauty of the words and melodies is reemphasized. “See, these are good songs, just listen to them with drums and guitars!” But the other defense being made is of the choice to record Your Blues the way it was recorded. The original version of “Notorious Lightning,” I think, sounds so much more correct than the version being offered here. Hearing these (in my opinion, very good) alternate versions serves somehow to reveal the beauty of the originals.

Maybe, though, it’s not defensive at all. Maybe, to quote another favorite band, Centro-matic, this is an assertion of “songs above sound.” There is a sentiment of transcendence here, in that one song can sound great in very different expressions. My favorite song from Notorious Lightning, “New Ways of Living” sounded so sweetly sad and reflective on Your Blues, but here it sounds angry and energetic. Both versions are beautiful, because the song, itself, is beautiful.

A song is not the instrument that plays it.

In my last post, I said that Streethawk was my conversion experience, and This Night was my baptism. Your Blues (2004) is Destroyer’s transfiguration. Transfiguration leaves me out of the equation, and that’s how I felt, and I imagine how many other Destroyer fans felt, upon first hearing Your Blues.

As alienating as Your Blues might be, it’s looked upon favorably, in general. It’s rated “Generally Favorable” on Metacritic, for example, with two 60s pulling down the average rating to 79. And it has inspired some really interesting criticism. The same writer for the Yale Herald who slammed This Night, loved Your Blues, calling it “at once a fuck you and a seductive hello.” Pitchfork fawned over it, giving it an 8.6 (a tenth of a point higher than Destroyer’s Rubies, even though the publication calls Rubies Destroyer’s best album). While I think that’s a very generous rating, I’m touched by the writing, which likens the album to “the soundtrack for a Sega Genesis game about kittens studying post-structuralism,” and wraps things up by saying, “Now, finally, the bandname begins to make sense.” Not that I agree; I think I’ve made the case that the name’s made sense since album one, track one, and that it’s been reinforced throughout the catalog.

But, without question, Your Blues is a different Destroyer. Where Golden Bridge through This Night were Che, Your Blues is Ghandi. Revolution is still the aim, but Your Blues takes the high road. The MIDI orchestra of Your Blues is just as disarming as the out-of-tune guitars of We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge, if not more, but, somehow, it sounds easier. The sounds are ethereal, and at the same time, the songs are accessible at the core. I can’t remember where I read it, but somewhere in an interview, Bejar wondered if people would think he was trying to sabotage his own songs (or something like that), and that makes sense. The melodies and lyrics are among the best that Bejar’s ever written. It’s just the MIDI synthesizers that make it a difficult album.

I’ve wondered what Your Blues would sound like if it were recorded differently. How would it sound with We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge’s sloppiness or This Night’s loose rock n’ roll, or even just with electric guitars and drums? I can’t say (because I don’t know, Notorious Lightning And Other Works notwithstanding) that it would sound better or worse, but I’m pretty sure something would be lost. In other words, if I ever stumble upon a genie, I wouldn’t wish for Your Blues to sound more like something else. And if I did, I imagine I’d use that third wish wishing it back to the way it was (and not only because that’s how genie stories always end).

On a few songs the inherent accessibility overpowers the demands of the MIDI-instrumentation. The best example is “It’s Gonna Take An Airplane,” which opens with an (actual) acoustic guitar and a (MIDI) flute. It’s too catchy and too pretty to be denied, and its lyrics are incredible…

It’s gonna take an airplane
To get me off the ground.
I don’t blame anyone who isn’t sticking around,
’cause when you stick around, when you stick around,
people like to put things in the ground.
Now, in my
evil empire I
am going to be a star in the night sky
above. “So you think this is love?”
Yes, I guess so,
at least something to make it from.

Other songs are more challenging. Some MIDI sounds, like the horns on “An Actor’s Revenge” and whatever that’s supposed to be harmonizing towards the end of “The Music Lovers,” and the (I guess that’s supposed to be a) saxophone on “Your Blues” sound overly synthesized. I’m not sure how to elaborate on that, other than to be brutally honest: it sounds a little muzak-y, and it reminds me of those really cheap accompaniment tapes my church used in the mid-nineties.

But like I said, the melodies and the lyrics make up for the muzak-ical discomfort. “What Road” features one of my favorite lyrics in any Destroyer song, “I’d been working on some open-ended shit / I was looking for an in and that was it.” I like that couplet more for its sound than its meaning, and Your Blues is full of lyrics that have great sound. The strange thing is that on Your Blues, the music seems subservient to the words. They sound clearer than on any other Destroyer album. But for the most part, and as on any other Destroyer album, the words are basically music, instruments, elements of sound. I’m sure there’s a zen koan in here somewhere, but it’s yours to discover and ponder.

The first time I heard Your Blues was, like Jacob wrestling God, a reverent struggle. One of my favorite songs was “From Oakland To Warsaw.” There’s a line from that song that summarized the struggle: “You thought you’d heard of everything… Hell no!”