destroyer

yoooo pumped for this

yeah, i agree -- goddess of drought is his best ballad-y number. this night was the first destroyer i heard, so it's a sentimental fave.

I consider Rubies, Trouble In Dreams, Streethawk, and Thief all better than This Night

don't wanna be a hater but I just don't get this. not that Trouble in Dreams sucks or anything, but it just doesn't hang together as an album for me, and I don't think there are enough awesome songs (there are a couple!) to make up for that.

Well in my estimation Your Blues towers above all his other efforts so wtfs all around it's all High Quality

fair enough

I enjoy those records more, yeah, but This Night is a monster at certain hours/in specific climates.

So much xpost.

word. at the risk of stating the extremely obvious, it's an excellent, er... night album

feels like it's been forever since we've gotten a new Destroyer record, but that's probably just because we got Trouble in Dreams two years after Rubies and here there'll have been a three year wait

well, he released that bay of pigs ep about a year ago, and that title track quickly became one of my favorite destroyer songs.

hope he goes with that on the upcoming full-length disc.

totally forgot that was even released -- and last year!

hope he goes with that on the upcoming full-length disc.

09 Bay of Pigs (Detail)

I wonder if (Detail) means the entire song's just gonna be a taken from the cutting room floor, one second clip of someone pressing a single key on a keyboard

Destroyer, the wordy, glammed-up project led by New Pornographer Dan Bejar, will release their ninth album, Kaputt, on January 25 via Merge.

In a press release, Bejar lists off 22 things we might want to know about the album. That oblique list is below, as is the album's tracklist.

Bejar: "Kaputt by Malaparte, which Bejar has never read… Kara Walker, specifically the lyrics she contributed to the song 'Suicide Demo for Kara Walker'… Chinatown, the neighborhood bordering on Bejar's… Baby blue eyes… 80s Miles Davis… 90s Gil Evans… Last Tango in Paris… Nic Bragg, who played lead guitar on every song, again… Fretless bass… The hopelessness of the future of music… The pointlessness of writing songs for today… V-Drums… The superiority of poetry and plays… And what's to become of film?… The Cocaine Addict… American Communism… Downtown, the neighborhood bordering on Bejar's… The LinnDrum… Avalon and, more specifically, Boys and Girls… The devastated mind of JC/DC, who recorded, produced and mixed this record from fall of 2008 to spring of 2010… The back-up vocals of certain Roy Ayers and Long John Baldry tours… Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence…"

Thought you all might be interested

The hopelessness of the future of music… The pointlessness of writing songs for today…

cosign

don't wanna be a hater but I just don't get this. not that Trouble in Dreams sucks or anything, but it just doesn't hang together as an album for me, and I don't think there are enough awesome songs (there are a couple!) to make up for that.

It took a very long time for Trouble in Dreams to click for me, but it finally did. This Night, I gotta be honest, it just seems interminable to me. Some good songs & then some that just go on forever. It & Your Blues are the weakest points in the D.B. catalog for me.

Oh I had this moment earlier this year when I decided Your Blues was a perfect circle.

I've had long, long battles over the best Destroyer record, with friends and with self, but from Thief on everything is golden in its own way so why sweat it.

Fuck, I just imagined Bejar singing lyrics over Boys & Girls.

It was fucking awesome.

It took a very long time for Trouble in Dreams to click for me, but it finally did.

This Night, I gotta be honest, it just seems interminable to me. Some good songs & then some that just go on forever

oh also: it's sort of a recurrent theme throughout Bejar's work, but I feel like there's a particular emphasis in This Night on the limitations of language -- all the wordless choruses, lines about "Deciphering what it means / When the band goes 'Doo rah, doo rah, doo rah, doo rah'"; I even read "Here Comes The Night" this way, interpreting the "night" in a line like "Don't look now, angel, here comes the night! (Ba-baaa, baaa, babababababa)" as a sort of absolute wordless darkness, desolation and loneliness, an emotional state that can't be conveyed (or exorcised) by language. but this might be a personal hangup.

so, Kaputt is going to be a "saxophone and soft jazz driven ode to an America that doesn’t seem to exist anymore."

this guy doesnt like it so much:

http://ventvox.com/tag/destroyer-kaputt-review/

i don't listen to jazz, and i don't like saxophone so much, so my anticipation level goes down, down,down...

Kinda want to beat that reviewer up

This album will rule

because?

Because Bejar is one of the few people that could pull off such a horrendous sounding concept. Really anxious to hear this, tbh.

i didn't like Your Blues so much, but i can see where youre coming from

i have a demo of suicide demo for kara walker and its pretty brilliant. it kinda bobs along at the same pace, doing the same thing. in the same vain as shooting rockets/bay of pigs/grief point i guess. the main instruments appear to be a bass guitar, a broken keyboard and a drum machine. then it finishes with a fake saxophone solo. looking forward to this album.

mp3: http://www.mbvmusic.com/2010/11/23/mp3-destroyer-chinatown/30569
sounds good to me, but i really love Your Blues, so this is a welcome return to that kinda more synthetic sound. sounds a little looser, spacier than Your Blues. Balearic, maybe?

uhhh this is amazing

brb firing up my yacht

This is amazing.
Also in that it's amazing without the zingers
Which I'm sure we'll be getting to by track 2?

well, at least it doesn't have fretless bass all over it.

that song sounds like lotta love.

the record is a killer.

This record is fantastic

I really want to hear this thing.

^^cosign

also, lol@yr display name

that song is ... alright. the fake sax is a bit hard to take. but Your Blues is my least fave Destroyer record. (still listen to it from time to time though.)

otoh I have listened to "Chinatown" 4 times today so there must be something there. either that or I am trying too hard.

i dont hear a fake sax? i dig the flugelhorn

cant decide if like this okay or really like it

fake sax or real sax or real flugelhorn it is kinda syrupy sounding to me. like that little run at 1:14 sounds like late night cable tv or something.

30 seconds in, and this rules.

i really want to hear it too! i haven't been interested since your blues, but man, bejar was my fucking MAN in like 2003-2004. not to be a dick, but that's the truth. i fell into different wormholes.

still, city of daughters isn't that bad! what's wrong with you people.

god, i had forgotten how much i love him. sorry, i'm just looking at tracklists and lyrics are coming back to me. and whoo.

Fuck I can't wait to hear this. I agree with Owen, kinda can't wait for the zingers to return.

I was blasting Rubies on the way home from the girlfriend's just now, makes me so excited for this.

question for anyone who's heard Kaputt: did this song make it on the album?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC7QBf17X8I

question for anyone who's heard Kaputt: did this song make it on the album?

No.

Don't want to say too much, but the whole album is along the lines of Chinatown and the Bay Of Pigs single from last year, which appears in slightly truncated form as the album closer. It's all about the soft synths, female (gospel-ish) backing vox, lots of trumpet and sax solos, very jazz-pop with a slight disco feel. Very synthetic in comparison to Rubies/ Trouble In Dreams, but not as far removed from those two as, say, Your Blues. Reminds me very much of those 80s bands like Prefab Sprout and even Deacon Blue, cheesy but still powerful. Probably a better album than 90% of this year's best.

Based on "Chinatown," I'm even more psyched for this album that I was before (and I was pretty psyched before) - Bejar can do no wrong in my eyes.

waht it sounds like Prefab Sprout? so stoked now.