[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.” 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.

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.

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.

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!”

It’s not just me. In a Pitchfork interview with Dan Bejar from two years ago, the interviewer states, “Destroyer’s Rubies, which has been really well received, strikes me as having a lot in common with This Night, which was not very well received.” Mr. Bejar stood up for This Night, even calling it his favorite Destroyer record. He points out that it was mostly just Pitchfork that maligned it. And it was. Pitchfork gave the album a terrible review to accompany a 4.4 rating. By comparison, the reissue of We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge received a 6.5. This says a lot, I think, about how expectations skew criticism, because it’s hard to believe that anyone could agree that We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge is a better album than This Night, and definitely not 2.1 points better. That’s beside the point, though, which is that even Pitchfork writers, who think lowly of the album, recognize that Destroyer’s best qualities–the ones that make Destroyer’s Rubies great–are present within This Night.

While I definitely object to the low rating and the scathing tone of Pitchfork’s review of This Night, I can also be reasonable about it. There is some difference in quality and restraint between it and Rubies. To call elements of This Night “masturbatory” and “self-indulgent” might be an extreme way to put it, but it’s on the mark. “Hey, Snow White” is a good example of what’s imperfect about This Night; it’s not just long, it’s needlessly long. Contrast it with “Rubies,” which is actually a minute and a half longer, and you get a sense of why people might be put off by This Night.

But there’s an attraction to the long-and-loose-ness of This Night. It’s because there are those moments of perfection. To me, “Crystal Country” is a perfect song. “Makin’ Angels” and “Students Care Hearts Out Of Coal” are pretty close. “Goddess Of Draught,” and several others are up there. It’s those perfect moments–some beautiful, some strange, some almost ugly–that make the rest of the album more than sufferable. For me, This Night became an album with which I wanted to spend time. Like watching a favorite movie on DVD, and then watching every bonus feature, This Night is compelling to the point that it’s 68 minutes don’t feel like enough. The space of the album is vast and free.

The long-and-loose-ness also complements some of the typical Destroyer showiness. Destroyer lyrics always flirt with pretension, which is part of the appeal. This Night isn’t exactly playful, but there is a sense of pleasure in the noodling. I guess that’s why it’s accused of being masturbatory. Somehow, that word gets associated with ego, but isn’t that a strange association to make? I won’t explore that any further, and I’m sure you get it. Anyway, I think Bejar means it, in “Here Comes The Night,” when he says, “Did these cacophonies please you / Hey, they please me, too.”

Mostly This Night creates a world, a feeling, that is both strange and familiar, distant and immediate. Think about the title. It hints towards both the present and the future. Many of the lyrics look back, but always in context of the present and the imminent. Maybe that’s why I like listening to This Night when the season’s changing, or when I’m driving, or when I’ve got a decision to make. Spatiality isn’t just an issue of arrangement and recording on This Night. It’s the theme.

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 all of it. Back then, the selection wasn’t as wide as it is now, so not as much stuck with me. Streethawk is the most notable exception. From the opening line of “Streethawk I” (”Hey girl, come on and take a whirl in my machine!”), I was hooked.

It was the second song, though, “Bad Arts,” that became my favorite. It’s still one of my favorite songs ever. Sure, it’s full of the kind of stuff I’ve talked about in Thief and the earlier albums, but there’s something else to it. “Bad Arts” is a big song, with sections and effects and a theatrical feeling. It was probably “Bad Arts” that turned me into an addict, because as good as it sounds on its own, it sounds even better in the context of the album. Some might suggest that it should’ve been the album opener (it’s very much like “Rubies,” in several ways), but I respectfully disagree. It sounds so perfect between “Streethawk I” and “Beggars Might Ride.” And “Beggars Might Ride” plays perfectly into “The Sublimation Hour.” And so goes the rest of the album. It’s almost perfect. And if it’s not perfect, the imperfections are easy to forget by the end of “Streethawk II.” Bejar knows how to write album closers.

Back to me. I guess it makes sense to explain the context when I first heard Streethawk. At the risk of using a ruined word, I was a little lost. I was scared, trying to recover from some difficult situations, trying to figure out what I believed and what I didn’t believe, trying to figure out what I wanted and didn’t want. The thing I was rejecting at the moment was absolutism; it was a very modern crisis.

Enter Streethawk. Contrast the lush, pretty sound with rock du jour, à la The Mooney Suzuki, The Strokes, White Stripes, et al. The music was something much more structured, but much less formulaic. And the lyrics! The lyrics! They said nothing in particular so beautifully and poetically and sometimes so offensively…

“The Bad Arts”

Goddamn your eyes, they just had to be twin prizes waiting for the sun.

“English Music”

Write your English Music, though you know it will come to no good, when brilliance has a taste for suffering, and you’re softer than the Western world.

“The Very Modern Dance”

Fuck it, I’m warning, you can look you can touch but, no, not that much. What’s one more police action when I’m cancelling the truce again?

“Strike”

Why do you work for the festival, when you’re sick of lifting spirits, spirits to the sky? “Body” and “Soul”: two words for that same nameless thing you have never known.

I won’t sit here and claim that any of those songs made sense to me at the time (or that they really do now), and, in fact, that was part of the appeal. There was room in Streethawk, and opportunity. The Strokes were fun and cool and catchy, but they kept repeating, “just take it or leave it.” I needed to hear, “There ought to be a law, there ought to be a railroad…”

If this gets too geeky for you, just look for the MP3s and skip ahead to the Barbarella trailer.

The premise of The Destroyer Myth is that Destroyer is waging war on Rock & Roll in order to save Rock & Roll (from itself). This premise can be traced back to the first song on the first album (which I’ve already discussed), and can be followed through songs that appear later in the Destroyer discography (for example, “English Music,” “Makin’ Angels,” “The Music Lovers,” and “Don’t Become The Thing You Hated” seem to fit here nicely). Destroyer has a complicated relationship with Rock & Roll, seeking to destroy it for the sake of rebuilding it. He wants to resist its temptations, but he’s not quite able (this fits with the spirit of the first two albums, which created distance and separation from Rock & Roll through intentionally bad playing/singing, low quality recording, etc.).

The album opener, “Destroyer’s The Temple,” claims that “there’s joy in being barred from the temple.” One listener has interpreted this as meaning that “hedonism is its own reward,” but I disagree. I see The Temple as the institution that is Rock & Roll. Sometimes reformers, and not true heretics, are the ones being barred from the temple.

The next song, “To the Heart of the Sun on the Back of the Vulture, I’ll Go,” sounds, at points, anthemic, as Destroyer observes culture and chooses a vulture as a ride. “The Way of Perpetual Roads” is a more explicit example of The Destroyer Myth in action…

It’s a long climb down from obscurity,
so cancel the keys to the city, please.
Upon which I’ll wretch the inextricable
failures of popular wisdom,
and popular music.

Possibly, Destroyer is the title character in “Canadian Lover/Falcon’s Escape,” and the allusion to The Wandering Jew presents some interesting possibilities, as well. On one hand, Destroyer could fear facing the same punishment as The Wandering Jew, for mocking a powerful, imposing figure (Rock & Roll), and being singled out (”someone’s bound to get wise”). Or, on the other hand, Destroyer is the savior, and his martyrdom will be mocked (”someone’s bound to get wise with you”). Even if my theory of The Destroyer Myth is garbage, the allusion is impressive, even by Destroyer’s standards.

“City of Daughters” continues the condemnations of popular wisdom and popular music:

What is it about music that lends itself so well
to business-as-fucking-usual?
A minor source of contention:
the resourcelessness of the convention.
Rock ‘n’ Roll sure came through for you.
Why would anyone want it to
when we can burn the living
proof, go!

“Mercy (We Had The Right)” doesn’t lend itself as readily to The Destroyer Myth, but it establishes a couple of important themes seen in Thief and the discography: Mercy and Language. The song is not as hopeful as the title implies, as Mercy is the word that was torn from the Book of Languages. The parenthetical portion of the title comes twice, once at the beginning of the song (when Destroyer laments that “we couldn’t speak about our right to be weak, back when we had the right”) and the end of the song (when Destroyer claims that “we had the right systems”). What’s he talking about? I don’t know. But this is lamentation and longing. Maybe it makes more sense in context with the next song.

In “Queen of Languages,” Destroyer pleads, “Go easy on me, Queen of Languages, please,” which seems to be a different spin on the previous song. If there’s anything to The Destroyer Myth, we see our hero selling out here: “We rendered ourselves perfectly suitable to public consumption.” I’m also tempted to read into the lines, “Once again, you’ve mistaken the minerals for cures, confused the catechism with your chores,” but I’ll let you interpret that as you will.

“I.H.O.J.” and “In Dreams” might be the two songs that fertilized my weird Barbarella connection. The former sounds like spacey soundtrack music, and the latter seems like a pretty diversion from the adventure at hand (in The Destroyer Myth theory). If there’s a narrative in Thief (which seems possible), perhaps the Woman of Occasion is someone we know, like some royal woman introduced to us in an earlier song.

Purpose is the theme of “Death on the Festival Circuit,” as Destroyer “begged the merchants, ‘Please serve a purpose other than treason!’” and declares that “there must be another reason to play these songs.” The hungover end of a festival is the setting for this crisis of meaning.

The last song, “Thief,” claims that “the damage was fun” with a sense of finality. I’m not sure whether Destroyer won…

Hospitals overflow
with singers, embittered and pissed.
Dead-ringers for men whose whereabouts should not be known
or be missed.

No failed revolts,
no plot from the inside
could contend with the prospect or trend towards being discovered before our time.
With upwards of thirty songs
all about women and children
whose lives will come second to mine.

Okay, so maybe I’m geeking out too much here. Maybe it all means something (else), or maybe it doesn’t. At any rate, Thief is a favorite with a lot of personal connections. The album has a lot in common with City of Daughters (and even a song of the same name), which leads to a Destroyer theory I can submit with greater confidence: Destroyer albums come in pairs. All theories aside, Thief is a fantastic album that showcases some of Dan Bejar’s best songwriting.

“We don’t demand villainy, we demand a new dawn,” Bejar croons on album opener, “Comments on the World as Will.” The understated track contains many of the same elements as old Destroyer–the theme of change, the clever word-smithery, the catchy melodies–but this time with a high production value. On City of Daughters, Bejar uses a studio and a band. Six instruments, plus “technology” and “ambience,” are listed in the liner notes. Three instrumentals (”Emax I,” “Emax II,” and “Emax III”) are spread out amongst the album, lending evidence that reveals that Bejar was thinking about City of Daughters as an album, and not just a collection of songs. Not that he was there, yet, with City of Daughters, especially in contrast with later albums, but he was at least moving that way.

More important than the move from songs to albums is the development in sound. Destroyer didn’t go from bedroom to ballroom over night. Hints of future grandiosity pop up in songs like “School, and the Girls Who Go There.” Even pared down songs, like “Melanie and Jennifer and Melanie” manage to achieve a grand feeling within its quietness. Bejar no longer hides his melodies or his lyricism behind toy pianos and out-of-tune guitars. Think of a teenage boy who stops being embarrassed because he’s tall, and starts using his stature to his advantage.

Most of the changes are sonic; Bejar’s lyrical style stayed pretty similar. There is a penchant for pop music references, and some self-referential lyrics, and plenty of abstract language painting. I wonder, where on the sincere/tongue-in-check continuum is “Signs” when Bejar commands (between two obvious lyrical references, one to “Surfin’ Bird,” the other to another song called “Signs”), “Quit being so cryptic with the way you rock and swerve”? Whatever, but fortunately, Destroyer did not quit being so cryptic.

Ideas For Songs features much of Bejar’s worst singing, cheapest recording, lowest production quality, and sloppiest playing. Eventually, though, some kind of light shines through the cracks. Some (ideas for) songs reveal, more than others, what’s so great about Destroyer.

“Child Of Styx” begs, “Please, don’t call them like you see them,” which serves as a nice motto for Destroyer Appreciation. Throughout Ideas For Songs, the haphazard strumming of out-of-tune guitars and lazy tapping of tiny drum-kits hide rich, beautiful melodies. Forced, nasally singing obscures lyrical genius. Destroyer Appreciation can be demanding. What we see (hear) is not necessarily what we get.

“Song About A Girl Up To A Point”–which sounds nothing like Rubies‘ “A Dangers Woman Up To A Point”–is like the kind of poem that is mostly forgettable, but which presents one or two beautifully poignant lines. In this case, “Your tongue is more than a tongue is more than a tongue is,” sticks out as a pretty clever turn of phrase, but kind of stays clever and nothing more. That’s typical of almost every other lyric in the song, until the devastating final line, “My dear, fuck you and fuck August.”

The highlight comes in “The Terror Serves A Purpose.” While still sloppy, the playing sometimes approaches tightness, and the melodies within the song aren’t as hidden. The music is pretty, in spite of itself. Lyrically, Bejar plays with words and meanings brilliantly. He contrasts extremes using surprisingly in-the-middle language, singing, “From wife to midwife / From house to halfway house.”

In my favorite line of the song (the last one), he sings, “And we serve a purpose,” which, of course, sounds like a value statement in the positive, stating that we are powerful and productive. Then, Bejar twists the statement by substituting a pronoun, this time singing, “And we serve it.” Suddenly, we aren’t so powerful, but instead, we’re slaves to an agenda.

Not that the song necessarily makes sense as a whole. It rambles vaguely (intentionally), but it works. The two ideas that I pointed out aren’t obviously connected, even if they do make more sense in light of the opening verse (”That’s one / Precipice we refuse to fall from / Straddling / Two famous worlds isn’t real / We’re creating a third one / That is”). Well, kind of. But that’s what’s so endearing about Destroyer’s lyrics. Even if there is a point being made, it’s so obscured that it doesn’t hinder the artistry of language. Bejar picks his words carefully, and we don’t know why he picks them, and we are allowed to draw our own conclusions, but in the end, we’re best off when we just admire the way he uses words.