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I’ve put every Destroyer album on repeat, and Streethawk: A Seduc­tion (2001) is no excep­tion. In fact, Streethawk is even more sig­nif­i­cant to me. Call it baby’s first Destroyer album. I don’t remem­ber why I down­loaded Streethawk from emu­sic, but I did. I down­loaded a lot of stuff at the time, and I lis­tened to …

I started to approach Thief (2000) the same way I’ve approached the first three Destroyer albums: high­light­ing par­tic­u­lar themes, tak­ing note of devel­op­ments within the canon, and point­ing towards my favorite moments. A rea­son­able enough approach to a rock album, I guess, but it’s mechan­i­cal. Not that I decided, “This is too mechan­i­cal,” and changed …

Com­par­ing City of Daugh­ters (1998) with Destroyer’s first two albums (We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge and Ideas For Songs) reveals a remark­able jump in sophis­ti­ca­tion. Like com­par­ing a lawyer’s first high-profile trial with the same lawyer’s col­lege papers–same per­son, some of the same ten­den­cies, but just a whole other level. Dan Bejar revealed his …

Ideas For Songs (1997) is one of Destroyer’s most chal­leng­ing releases. From the penis on the tape’s cover (yep, it was released on cas­sette) to the lo’er-than-lo-fi pro­duc­tion (did I men­tion it was released on cas­sette?), Ideas feels even more arti­fac­tual than its pre­de­ces­sor. Ideas For Songs fea­tures much of Bejar’s worst singing, cheap­est record­ing, …

On March 18, Destroyer will release its (their? his?) next album, Trou­ble In Dreams. Until then, I’ll take a look back at Destroyer’s exist­ing cat­a­log, start­ing today with We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge. The Destroyer Wiki is immensely help­ful, pro­vid­ing lyrics and addi­tional album infor­ma­tion. I have an annoy­ing habit when I write about …