Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

interesting
discogs has it as "Bay of Pigs (Detail)".
the pitchfork review mentions that an ambient piece was substituted for BoP on the vinyl

I’ve thumbed through the books on your shelves.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070724053832/simpsons/images/thumb/7/73/Drive_in.png/495px-Drive_in.png

oh great, i shelled out for the vinyl just for the side 4 vinyl only track which turns out to be Bay of Pigs...

um

isn't the instrumental piece vinyl-only, too?

just listened to some clips... can't say I'm really drawn to it. as pastiche it seems a bit too straight/faithful to its sources and the one thing that sticks out as unusual/out of place is 9as noted by others) his voice. which is terrible.

This is not pastiche.

yr right, pastiche implies disparate elements - this is more like an homage I guess

dunno if I'm gonna make it through all the songs tbh kinda wanna turn it off already and just listen to Katy Lied instead

Listen to "Downtown."

the sleeve is great, I'll give him that.

this doesnt sound close enough to 'katy lied' (or anything else really) to be 'pastiche' ... its using certain instruments & production styles but doesnt sound structurally like the stuff ppl are comparing it to, like, at all

certainly way too freeform to be steely dan esque

that's kinda what I don't like about it! Steely Dan had HOOKS and (at least up until Aja/Gaucho) some pretty weird/twisty song structures. this stuff just kinda floats along on two-chord changes and a lot of washed out textures - trying hard to be Babylon Sisters but lacking the chops

i dont know babylon sisters but uhhh being freeform is the point, its not 'about' hooks

dude I am agreeing with you

re: Babylon Sisters - this is the opening track on Gaucho, the Dan's last album. it is noteworthy - sorta - for signalling a shift away from the complex structures and chordal interplay that were the band's usual stock in trade and toward a more free-form, groove-centered approach. even so, it has more changes/tonal shadings than this Destroyer stuff. even tho the underlying chord structure is simple, there are a whole bunch of melodies and weird harmonies and turnarounds in it. which don't really seem to be evident in Kaputt afaict.

so maybe it's a bad comparison

It only signaled what SD would do on that song! Have you heard Gaucho? The tile track, "Time Out of Mind," "Third World Man," "Hey Nineteen" -- lots of complex chordal interplay, and TIGHT.

xp to shakes

oops, sorry, there is a vinyl-only track.

eh, whatever. imho Kaputt cops the sound and the texture of late period Steely Dan, but doesn't bother with the song structures and hooks and uber-session musician chops. which is, I think, what deej was saying.

xp

It only signaled what SD would do on that song! Have you heard Gaucho? The tile track, "Time Out of Mind," "Third World Man," "Hey Nineteen" -- lots of complex chordal interplay, and TIGHT.

this is all correct. sorry if I implied otherwise that wasn't really my intention. I just ref'd Babylon Sisters cuz it seemed most analogous to what Kaputt is going for, except even Babylon Sisters has more going on in it than most of these Kaputt songs do.

or is it more that you just take issue with my casual summation that late period Dan is more free-form/groove-centered than their earlier stuff...? I guess that's arguable (Do It Again has what, three chords?).

Well, everything you've said really: about Steely Dan, their applicability to what Bejar's attempting, and Kaputt itself. I'm not going to offer a full review yet, but I hear very little Steely Dan here: it's closer to what a lot of Bejar's English faves from eighties, inspired by the Dan, attempted.

*from the eighties

English faves: Scritti Politti, China Crisis (produced by Walter Becker, of course), Prefab Sprout.

it's really weird how you guys feel the need to compare/contrast this with steely dan so much

yeah, stop that before you ruin it for me.

"Complex" chords = "Steely Dan" for lots of people I know. It's not like they were the only band to play them.

shakey at least listen to the record first

Shakey it's not about the number of chords it's about the tertial harmonies

Also, blehhhhhhh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUdMbYpPEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-m_tMw36A

lol those sound nothing alike

avalon is the closest touchpoint for me still although it doesnt sound like a 'pastiche' of avalon as much as a 'similiar production style'

you gotta shake it baby

I LOVE THIS ALBUM.

how is it a touchpoint? Genuinely curious -- no snark.

'similar production style'

b/c Ferry was more direct vocally and chordally on Avalon than he ever was and would be again.

& instrumentation, & the general svelte aesthetic

lol those sound nothing alike

that's my point now can we move on

Man, if only Bejar had asked Ferry to play synths on Kaputt...

that's kinda what I don't like about it! Steely Dan had HOOKS

this album has mad hooks, sometimes more than one in a song!

OMGZ the LinnDrum on side 3!!

so i picked up a shift last night at my bar on "college tuesday"...put this on and got surprising reactions. Lots of "who's this?" and to top it off Song for America actually had people dancing and sexy girl dancing. Although there were a few odd looks during the whole animals...deaths embrace thing. Meanwhile I was doing lots of pelvic thrusts behind the bar. Im sure this is exactly what Bejar was going for.

i don't hear steely dan in this at all really, there's more elements of like...fleetwood mac or something than the dan even

it reminds me of Gerry Rafferty

Picked this up yesterday and was listening on the way to work this morning. Definitely not seeing the Dan touchpoints. Actually, the first comparison I thought of was Spandau Ballet, which Dan gets a little tetchy about in his interview here. But on first listen, there's a lot to love here -- it seems to me that he never approaches these aesthetics, either here or on the Bowie-compared records, ironically or as pastiche. It's just a production/arranging choice, one of many he could make.

"Suicide Demo" is amazing.

Also, by weird coincidence, "Babylon Sisters" just popped up on my iPod.

He should really get a haircut.