Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

love this record but invoking Fagan??...."destroyer your arms are too short to box w.god"

kinda jealous of flopson's upcoming day

wait, destroyer's songwriting is hollow?

sorry, I don't get that Pink-Dan resemblance at all. I'll grant Pink his chord and tempo changes, but the rest is closer to a nineties ideal of a fungible singer-songwriter one-man-band record.

pink is closer to guided by voices than steely dan

I like "Round and Round" but I don't hear what's SD-ish about it -- it sounds like mildly interesting bedsit melancholy to me. Steely Dan had a lot more going on.

pink is closer to guided by voices than steely dan

YES

Okay ah I was comparing Kaputt to the production on SD and Roxy, rather than Pink. It was a poorly formed sentence.

i dont listen to guided by voices -- the production vibe, bass parts & unconventional compositions remind me of steely dan. i certainly dont think ariel pink's career is at that level but 'before to day' is similar in approach imo

i like both of them -- destroyer is avalon

to me, bejar is the new bowie.

sans makeup and fake stage-character.

im just talking abt how these two records sound -- is there a bowie record that sounds as much like this as avalon does?

no. you're right. i'm thinking more rubies-era destroyer.

How does Bejar sound like Bowie?

Yeah the Bowie comparisons seem further off than anything..apart from this faint dusting of 'glam'.

In the pre-Kaputt stuff, that is.

maybe cuz Bejar sounds "odd" and "British"

pink is closer to guided by voices than steely dan

I don't get that at all. The production on Before Today is a little murky or hazy, but the songwriting and instrumentation is nothing like GBV.

no. it's the shambling, loose song structures and tumbling-downhill drumming, mostly (reminds me of bowie's berlin period).

The muffled, half-formed ideas and hints of melody that maybe cohere into something attractive definitely remind me of GBV; and there's moments when Pink's voice evokes "Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory" levels of emotion.

also, and i have to go back to rubies to jog my memory, but i think it's also the way the guitars are arranged into the songs. not way out front, but sort of bobbing up and down like a snake.

I kinda see although I would characterise those the two elements you mentioned with Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory, rather than the Kraftwerkian glimmer and sheen of the Berlin-stuff.

ha i kinda love the way alfred frames everything in such pejorative terms that simply by accepting his framing you cede ground to him

"actually i think the half-formed ideas work to ... wait a minute."

I'm 1000x more likely to compare vocals (hence the Destroyer/Pet Shop Boys comparison) than lyrics. Voice is 1000x more important than lyrics

but Pink/GBV are you for real? what's wrong with you?

i agree w/alfred and fucking love guided by voices

xp scratch the 'the' between those and two eek. Some weak prose mistakes tonight...

'Voice is 1000x more important than lyrics' is the wrongest thing said tonight...the enunciation and sounds of the words tell as much of the story as the timbre.

levels of emotional power in vocals is a good comparison? shoot metallica is like GBV sometimes. retarded

lol deej

'Voice is 1000x more important than lyrics' is the wrongest thing said tonight...the enunciation and sounds of the words tell as much of the story as the timbre.

First part in quotation marks = right on. Then the second sentence contradicts the preceding phrase.

xp scratch the 'the' between those and two eek. Some weak prose mistakes tonight...

'Voice is 1000x more important than lyrics' is the wrongest thing said tonight...the enunciation and sounds of the words tell as much of the story as the timbre.

― Davek (davek_00)

enunciation and sounds are vox not lyrics

i've been mildly surprised at the idea of 'cheesiness' or 'irony' as issues with this stuff, though i can see why it might be for some. can't figure out much about how age might play into that, either. (i mean, i suppose you could say i'm of the age where these sounds are like magical preconscious memories of what was on the radio when i was an infant, or something, but i'm not having any strong reaction to them like that.) it's not a sound that's limited to the distant past, eithe -- i liked late-90s Aluminum Group albums that sounded like this, and that last Scritti Politti album had some similarities with this, etc...

xp I don't see that as a flat-out contradiction....the lyrics, the words themselves transmitted have this autonomous effect on the voice. You're responding to the aural patterns of the lyrics even if you're not registering their meaning semantically. Does that make more sense? I get your train of thought though..

My review mentions Scritti Politti, nabisco: that sense of a singer reciting a monologue with himself whose soundtrack comprises Toto, Scaggs, and Sylvian. Also: what's that one track which specifically namedrops magazines?

What I love about Green Gartside is how he tosses a lifeline between himself and his listeners yet he's ready to yank it back.

I suppose you're right, but I'm certain there is this half-life that exists where the words placate the sound/vox. What can I say ILM, I come here to learn!

ha i kinda love the way alfred frames everything in such pejorative terms that simply by accepting his framing you cede ground to him

"everything"

EVERYTHING

haha i like that u dispute quantity, but not the main idea of that post

haha well of course -- I have a paradigm to uphold

haha i like that u dispute quantity, but not the main idea of that post

― challopian youtubes (deej), Monday, January 24, 2011 10:31 PM (4 minutes ago)

ha you kinda turned the tables on him tho..."come on, everyth...wait"

Dalek,

Certain words enhance the vox. I do understand what you are saying. Certain words or sentences can easily ruin a song as well. But lyrics do not influence whether or not I choose to like a song in any other way. Good lyrics do improve a tune that I already like though. I don't care for the vox on Kaputt so there's no room for improvement if I knew the lyrics.

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I did not mean to have this many posts to this thread. Sorry yall if it looks like I'm trying to troll here. I just wanted to post one or two cents about this album, see if people agree/disagree, and then bolt.

i liked late-90s Aluminum Group albums that sounded like this

Bless you.

I think the "its songs carefully planned in gesture but meager in structure and development" line from the NYT review really undersells this album. the almost-aleatoric progression of its songs is one of its strengths imo

can i just

Every era has a sound. When considering this, it can be easy to forget that the sound developed as a way to express something.

welcome back, nabisco!!!!

ps- you are needed on the Hyundai car commercial thread

Seriously did not realize that all these years I was the ONLY ONE who had a violent aversion to the sounds Bejar is referencing on this record. I can appreciate him as a lyricist and a songwriter, and can see that there's something to sink your teeth into on this record, but it is dressed in such a way that I just can't stomach it.

The fact that I'm still subscribed to this thread is pure masochism.

Aside from all the signifiers of the 'shiny veneer', the "what does it all mean?" Qs and so forth,
This is a really well performed pop record, like, "Good sax playing!"

Owen P.: truth. The outro on Kara Walker, oh my.