Destroyer "Have We Met" out 1/31/20

i am not very convinced. there is still this cheap 80s keyboard sound. and i will never get over his voice. additionally i find his self-referential lyrics bloated and don't like his permanent use of words like "shit". besides being totally retro his music is also totally uninteresting retro. what is the point in making music today which seems to be written to break the charts in the 80s?

I don't agree with any of that but I do think the hyperbole in this thread is a bit much

if you've never liked destroyer i wouldn't expect this to be the place someone would start liking him. i generally like all his weird stylistic quirks.

ken is the only previous album of his that has those sort of synth sounds and i think the synths on this album are much better-sounding generally. it's obviously drawing strongly on 80s sophisti-pop, as has most of his work from kaputt onward, but it's more than just a pastiche so it's not uninterestingly retro to me. over the past decade he & his band have done an excellent job of filtering various retro sounds through their own style to get something that feels distinctly destroyer. like nicolas bragg's guitar leads are a defining part of the destroyer sound and which 80s synthpop or sophistipop band had a player that sounds like him?

i went back to poison season to compare it to the new one and i'd probably put them at about equal second in his discography now.

Nothing sounds "eighties" here, more like aural tips of the hat

haven't heard this but what a title!

― Good taste, bit Victorian but who isn't? (jed_), Friday, January 31, 2020 8:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ok i need an explanation

― I wanna publish memes and rage against machimes (rip van wanko),

I'm not sure why I like it so much, it's just very suggestive in many ways. A question but no question mark so maybe it's a statement that used to be a question. It's a phrase that has changed meaning since social media. Also, my oldest friend says to me when I ask her a question that I should already know the answer to.

*says this to me

Nothing sounds "eighties" here, more like aural tips of the hat

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, February 1, 2020 4:35 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah. “crimson tide” sounds like berlin bowie and every band inspired by berlin bowie collapsed into a single point, for instance. it’s not bound by the popular idea of the sound of a decade

there's a bit of OMD in It Just Doesn't Happen

kaputt gestured toward avalon but i think this is bejar's actual roxy music album

foolssong

i am in love with this gorgeous album. kind of want some y2k versions to see release, though.

Just realized, this joins the elite class of Destroyer albums where a title track appears outside of the first and/or last spot on the tracklist (Your Blues, Kaputt)

Been on kind of a Destroyer nostalgia kick lately, so while I've got y'all's attention: "Another word for sacrament" = probably "host", no?

This album is v. good and doesn't sound at all "retro" to my ears, the way Kaputt did. I think it actually sounds very of-the-moment with the airless, sound-designed-to-death production.

very of-the-moment with the airless, sound-designed-to-death production

So I guess this is why I don’t like a lot of critically praised contemporary music.

saw them live the other night, the band is killer

"crimson tide" sounding especially prescient in the covid area

era

I saw them in Raleigh on March 11 before things went ah viral. Bejar, sodden and sometimes incoherent, was nevertheless terrific, and the band's embellishments marvelous.

I remember when I saw him on the Kaputt tour he had a certain anti-charisma onstage.

https://devonrecordclub.com/2020/05/24/destroyer-have-we-met-round-110-probably-nicks-choice/

Really love this record!

I feel that after Trouble in Dreams, he's been on automatic pilot lyrically, and putting more energy into coming up with a big presentational concept for the arrangements/production on each album than writing songs. Same lyrical tics, same chord progressions over and over.

I didn't really like Have We Met either, but I did just watch all three videos from the album. They communicated a lot more than the songs alone. Maybe he needs to write a bunch of songs for a movie, or some other external framework to give his songs context.

I also adore this album, and the Philadelphia show in March was sublime.

My friend sent me this when I enthused about the new one in an email, thought it was interesting: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/destroyer-dan-bejar-nine-favourite-songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r_N-BMBJMo

new album labyrinthitis is out 25 march

quite an interesting single, it's unusually hard for him

love it.

Been completely addicted to the new single, it has some of his best lyrics imo.

I love the bit in the video where it says "DE-STROY-ER" for the line "insert three syllables here"

a few tracks in & he's super into new order again but the results are way cooler than on ken

he's still coming up with ways to make what should be well-worn ground for him feel fairly fresh & inspired, another great album & up with his best

it's most similar to the last one but more upbeat, denser & weirder

yeah i really love this album

gets pretty close to being a kaputt sequel at times but always keeps things weirder

where are you hearing it?

it's floating around out there, unusually early for these days

For me, his last really convincing record was Trouble in Dreams. His stylistic shift with Kaputt made sense, but the actual songs and lyrics since then have felt like Destroyer-by-numbers. I think he feels this shift, he's alluded to a change in mindset around 2010.

imo his only weak album since kaputt is ken.

i think the shift in sound from his previous folk/glam thing to the new sophisti-pop-adjacent palette from kaputt onwards has been a big improvement & fit his vocal approach much better. but i don't really love his old material or anything, i only really go back to your blues & rubies, so i can understand how someone who absolutely loved what he was doing before could be let down by his newer sound.

I wouldn't say I dislike the new style; I think the songwriting changed at the same time, but the two didn't have to go hand-in-hand. His lyrics don't hang together like they used to, it's like they're off-the-cuff jottings meant to sound as "Destroyer" as possible.
Aside from maybe one or two songs per record, all I get from them is semi-cynical mood music.

i haven't heard full destroyer albums for a while because i'm lazy but i'm obsessed with "crimson tide" and feel like i could also be with the new single. i think the lyrics for both are incredible. the new one manages to achieve this encapsulation of what it's like to drive across the desert now in 2022 when the climate is changing and the world is full of crazy shit in one line. the opening of "crimson tide" through the line about being on the lookout for anything that moves is just devastating. i don't hear cynicism, i hear a bunch of different strategies for survival.

also the "crimson tide" video is so so good.

the change in lyrical approach he's discussed was just becoming more restrained, so there's less of him trying to cram his dense poetry into his rock songs, which allows him to take a more relaxed vocal approach. he's gone back and forth with exactly how dense vs. relaxed he gets.

his lyrics have their ups and downs, but i'm not a huge lyrics person. sometimes they're very compelling and sometimes they're basically self-parody but still endearing. i can get how if you loved his older, denser lyrical approach you'd be disappointed by his move away from that post-trouble in dreams.

poison season was pretty dense, wasn't it? i didn't return to that one much, felt like a self-conscious throwback

Another new one. Didn't realise the album had already leaked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmOagjXedYk

Eat the Wine is closer to the vibes of the whole record than Tintoretto. Also, it probably has the least interesting lyrics of the record, it's a groove tho.

Anyone who's eaten wine with fork and knife on a Saturday night will relate.

I still think it's good mind you, maybe because it doesn't keep up with the three opening lines which are fantastic: Unfounded accusations // "Ruff, ruff" goes the beagle to the terrier // Been meaning to wear my hair like this for ages.

The rhythm section throughout the record is some of the best they've done. I am no musician so my understanding of these things are limited, but it sounds like from Have We Met they found a formula that just elevates everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3hFZkFgs-g

video for "june", one of the real highlights on this album

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/destroyer-labyrinthitis/

and a good interview, though once again he mentions they started out with a cooler idea than what they ended up with:

"they set out to make what Bejar calls a “high-energy Cher record.” They imagined an unceasing four-on-the-floor beat going through an entire side of the LP, with Bejar spewing his cryptic musings between the pounding bass hits."

you can hear the remnants of that idea in "suffer" and "all my pretty dresses" (a little of which is at the end of that video) but they didn't end up really going for it.

dump him!

i like the concepts and the lyrics but i'm not feeling the music tbh

I've seen Destroyer three times, and, perhaps unusually, Bejar seemed most comfortable at the show where he played solo acoustic.

Why do you say that might be unusual? Makes sense to me, given his beginnings.

I saw them last night. My abiding memory of the gig? The bass player's performance! Slap bass with flapping combover and staring eyes...

I can picture Bejar singing that last sentence.

haha

Slap bass with flapping combover and staring eyes/
Remind me again how much we're going to pay these guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBhxLRwsOyQ

new one-off single with sandro perri

meandering

kept waiting for it to start

The back half of Labyrinths is really fun. This album is really clicking for me now as one of the best of the year.

"Suffer" cracked me up every time I heard it because I thought the distorted voice at the beginning was randomly saying "Sega!" Turns out it's "Say it!"