Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

i know!! i'd leave. srsly.

have a few beers and dance

makes it easy to ignore everyone else

Belated comment on Chicago show - agree with the feeling old part. Odd sight for me was the 2 early twenties girls drinking wine and grinding on each other during Suicide Demo. Also a young dude was so psyched for Bay of Pigs he was jumping up and down! I was in the front though so maybe it probably wasn't like that further back.

The non-Kaputt songs were so good I wish they had done more just to hear how they would've worked them out. Gonna Take an Airplane totally rocked and Painter in Your Pocket was mostly bass-driven. 3,000 Flowers was more like the album version but also rockin'. That and Bay of Pigs were the ones he took out lyric sheets for, I don't have a problem with it. He's never been that charismatic on stage, except for a solo show in 2009, but yeah the only words he spoke the entire night were "that one was called Kaputt" after the title track and "this is an older one" before 3,000 Flowers. They also had a newly reissued LP of his first cassette Ideas for Songs in case anyone cares.

From the Washington Post review:

The one band member who consistently held back was Bejar himself. The musician (also a member of the New Pornographers) offered his lyrics in a sort of disinterested hipster croon and did little to engage his fans. He spoke only a few words between songs and sometimes disappeared when not singing. He turned his back to the crowd or sank from view altogether, and cloaked his face behind a lyric sheet during “3,000 Flowers’’ and “Bay of Pigs.’’ Onstage, Destroyer’s meandering, jazzy material needs a visual focus, but the singer seemed determined not to provide it. If there were people in the club that hadn’t already taken Destroyer to heart, this performance probably didn’t convert them.

http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=5592

thanks diamond dave--excellent

nyctaper is a national treasure

all i have from him are pavement's last shows in nyc, which are great too

yeah nyctaper is kool

All that slender-wristed white translucent business
Passes for love these days
Mushhead genius passes for love these days

man this fucking record

downloading right now

Still my album of the year so far.

totes

saw em tonight

loved it.

tho war on drugs sounded like real estate fronted by bob dylan imo

Good review here

http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2011/04/24/destroyer-kaputt-podinertia/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cyclicdefrost+%28Thermostat+-+Latest+from+Cyclic+Defrost%29

All that slender-wristed white translucent business
Passes for love these days
Mushhead genius passes for love these days

man this fucking record

― Suicide Demo for Kemba Walker (govern yourself accordingly), Sunday, April 10, 2011 5:25 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

xpost

I don't begrudge his opinion, but I can't really agree with any of that review. The whole notion that music is improved by being lo-fi just doesn't compute. This album sounds great, not because it draws upon some 80s influences, but rather because it is expertly performed and produced and sounds much better than a lot of the stuff that folks reference in these reviews.

review is sucky - first for the Sade diss, second for him thinking that "Chasing some girls/Chasing cocaine/Through the backrooms of the world" is an oblique metaphor

awful review but also i keep reading the site's name as "celtic defrost"

well, it's metaphorical in that the world doesn't literally have backrooms, and that you can't literally chase cocaine, in that it is inanimate, and that when bejar refers to 'chasing some girls' he probably does not mean that he was literally chasing them on foot or in a vehicle

can't decide if i like this record or not, someone decide for me

you like it, but metaphorically

"the world doesn't literally have backrooms"

wtf

'I wish I could fuck every girl in the world' metaphorical because wayne's not literally bringing the girls INSIDE the world to fuck them

album of the year

cosign on AOTY status; Kaputt is pretty much the only Bejar record in any form that I've ever liked but it is uniformly excellent (especially with "The Laziest River" included in the running order)

he was probably metaphorically splitting hairs there because nobody could actually

http://www.courvo.biz/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/splitting-hairs.jpg

oh, that was poorly expressed. 'backrooms of the world' is vaguely metonymic or synecdochal imo, it functions slightly differently to e.g. 'countries of the world', which more or less = 'rooms of my house'. ymmv etc.

this is cool http://www.danielbejar.com/Visual_Topography_of_a_Generation_Gap.html

difft dan bejar iirc

http://www.danielbejar.com/Destroyer_1.html hilarious

about the googleganger

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/03/21/110321ta_talk_sanneh

― Moreno, Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:03 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

that cyclic defrost review is terrible

It's weird how this '80s New Romantic-disco style, which seems at first like such a total left-turn for Bejar, ends up fitting him so well. For one thing, his distinctive nasal tenor and loquaciousness seem better suited to an understated singing voice. His loud rock voice, as on his earlier glam-rock albums, could be a bit grating at times. Also, the weird wordless ostinato "la la la" and "da da da" vocal parts that he often used in place of choruses now make more sense as instrumental horn or synth parts. I guess I'm making it sound like I hated his old stuff, which isn't true at all, but this new style does suit him very well.

still LOVING this album. today I realise it sounds a lot like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hxkwaXaGKI

live show that nyc taper posted is really great -- i'm glad bejar and band are embracing this sound. They could've easily "rocked up" the arrangements (like when he took Your Blues on the road), but the horns/keyboards work so well in a live setting.

He looked like he was facing some sort of inner turmoil last night, the band did well to pull the thing together. The latter half of the gig was better. Brass players kind of made the show for me.

yeah the band really killed it, esp that sax player, but idk is that how dan bejar always is? didnt really seem happy to be there

I saw him in NYC earlier this year. He wasn't the most charismatic performer ever, but he didn't seem to be actively unhappy - just slightly uncomfortable.

^all part of the schtick of this record, no? Bejar-as-detached-socialite-voyeur or something...I for one don't want to see him smile his way through 'Suicide Demo for Kara Walker' or 'Chinatown.'

also, this still stands as AOTY for me.

yeah, i've listened to this record *a lot* this year -- my two year old loves it for some reason. and it still hasn't gotten old.

^all part of the schtick of this record, no?

It didn't seem like a shtick to me, but I haven't seen him on other tours. He didn't seem like the kind of natural performer who feeds off the crowd, but maybe he was just nervous - it was a pretty big crowd (full house at Bowery Ballroom).

Also, this record still sounds amazing.

The guy's not a smiler. I think he self-styles after misanthropic literary heroes of his like Thomas Bernhard, etc...

xp record still sounds great. album of the year (not having heard a single other contender!)

he should become a robot like daft punk

Has anyone else noticed the similarities between Bejar's voice and Amanda Lear's?

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yDIO0DXKok

also, this still stands as AOTY for me.

yes yes yes still album of the year. i think i've said it on here before but the obvious vocal comparison = luke haines. they are totally the same person split into different nationalities (thus bejar is a lot more positive obviously)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqmLQE6BiwY

Best America-themed album in years? Discuss.

Well, no, that would be this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YoeL-GdyL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

But it comes damn close.