Destroyer
Destroyer
Parrish
Austin, Texas
Destroyer is Dan Bejar and a touring band of seven musicians. Over 20 years, Bejar and his band have released albums as diverse as Streethawk: A Seduction and Your Blues. Destroyer’s sound has been a methodical fidget with everything from spare, wiry indie rock to a brand of baroque pop. And a mix of ambient music and jazzy tones. But even when they're playing with glam and glossy yuppie pop and all the rest, Destroyer is one man's mechanism for working through a knot of persistent, nagging musical themes.
Bejar's voice in concert is much like what one hears on his records. He does a fine impression of his recorded voice. He projects an air of anxious cool. And fans may note a degree of noise and viscera in the stage performances not found on the studio versions. After he deadpans "we're gonna play one more song," the seven-piece backing group whips up a tornado of sound in the shape of "Dream Lover," a key track on Poison Season. In the studio, it was strident and vibrant. On stage, its explosion into being makes Dan's laconic aside about "one more song" into a wry understatement. The pinnacle of the show's verve and energy comes in "A Savage Night at the Opera," a highlight from 2011's glossy and sophisticated Kaputt. Bejar executes the vocal melody with mounting force and coyness, the band bucking and swaying and building beneath his vocals until they hit an instrumental climax that could very well have swallowed the stage whole, the combined noise of the horns and guitars being too much for melody but more than enough for a catharsis that wasn't there on record.
With his broad shoulders and bouncer's frame, Bejar commands the stage even as his gait and expression make him seem abstracted, dreamy, and a bit shy. The combination suits the character of the music. His band consists of two horn players, a keyboardist, two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. With the eight of them crammed on stage, there isn’t much room for dancing or movement. Almost all of the songs come from Kaputt or Poison Season, the two Destroyer albums that best accommodate a horn section, with brief readings from the masterful Destroyer's Rubies. Fans will be disappointed to learn that when the band played "Rubies" as an encore, they snipped out the closing acoustic section, superb lyrics and all. It would have been interesting to hear Dan sing "come on honey, let's go outside, you disrupt the world's disorder just by virtue of your grace" live, but one might suppose that Dan didn't want to leave most of the band with nothing to do during the show's final moments.
In other words, Destroyer on stage seems to give one everything they enjoy about Destroyer on record, but with more energy, vigor, and beautiful screeching noise.
by Omar Gheith
Parrish
Austin, Texas
Destroyer is Dan Bejar and a touring band of seven musicians. Over 20 years, Bejar and his band have released albums as diverse as Streethawk: A Seduction and Your Blues. Destroyer’s sound has been a methodical fidget with everything from spare, wiry indie rock to a brand of baroque pop. And a mix of ambient music and jazzy tones. But even when they're playing with glam and glossy yuppie pop and all the rest, Destroyer is one man's mechanism for working through a knot of persistent, nagging musical themes.
With his broad shoulders and bouncer's frame, Bejar commands the stage even as his gait and expression make him seem abstracted, dreamy, and a bit shy. The combination suits the character of the music. His band consists of two horn players, a keyboardist, two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. With the eight of them crammed on stage, there isn’t much room for dancing or movement. Almost all of the songs come from Kaputt or Poison Season, the two Destroyer albums that best accommodate a horn section, with brief readings from the masterful Destroyer's Rubies. Fans will be disappointed to learn that when the band played "Rubies" as an encore, they snipped out the closing acoustic section, superb lyrics and all. It would have been interesting to hear Dan sing "come on honey, let's go outside, you disrupt the world's disorder just by virtue of your grace" live, but one might suppose that Dan didn't want to leave most of the band with nothing to do during the show's final moments.
In other words, Destroyer on stage seems to give one everything they enjoy about Destroyer on record, but with more energy, vigor, and beautiful screeching noise.
by Omar Gheith
