Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WabZuP0FNQs

Listened to this on the way into work this morning and thought it was kinda terrible tbh. God help us if there's a war etc etc.

I suppose it's less an issue of the voice with me and more that I found the combination of the production and the songwriting really cloying, but then again this is a problem I have with a lot of North American indie.

All this debating over contingents of Destroyer fans has overlooked me and people like me: people who knew about him pre New Pornographers and didn't really like him, didn't really like him in the New Pornographers, didn't really like him live, and generally haven't liked a Destroyer album til this one. Which means he now faces a creative challenge: if you release a breakthrough album, does your follow up once again go a different direction and likely alienate the fans you broke through to or just offer more of the same, but even more of it? I'm not sure where this guy will go with this. On one hand, he has been known to lose interest and wander a la Oldham. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he enjoys being popular. But maybe not.

I'm in your camp, Josh, and the only answer I can offer is: who knows?

pretty sure he's not gonna wring his hands about that.

All this debating over contingents of Destroyer fans has overlooked me and people like me: people who knew about him pre New Pornographers and didn't really like him, didn't really like him in the New Pornographers, didn't really like him live, and generally haven't liked a Destroyer album til this one.

^Me^

In fact this seems one of the biggest contingents for this album. I just think his lyrical approach and voice suits the music/production so perfectly you can't ignore even if your previous knee-jerk was "fuck this guy." I dunno, it's a singular album from him I think...don't think he will repeat it, as is his artistic wont.

We shall see. I didn't think M83 dude would be all, for my next album, I will make things even bigger and longer and more '80s and cheesier!! Curious what the Phoenix guys are going to do for their big breakthrough follow-up, too.

@ Matt DC, too bad, I'm disappointed. I love it. It is a record from 1998 (!) though, before everybody's ears got tired of indie rock.

@ everyone else, I understand that Dan's music isn't for everybody, or even half of everybody, and this 'tempered' version of him has appeal to those who didn't like him previously. And I think I'd be on your side of the argument if David Berman suddenly released some slick record.

And I think I'd be on your side of the argument if David Berman suddenly released some slick record.

This is pretty on point comparison.

@ Matt DC, too bad, I'm disappointed. I love it. It is a record from 1998 (!) though, before everybody's ears got tired of indie rock.

I thought Matt meant Kaputt?

Ah, so, that makes more sense.

does your follow up once again go a different direction and likely alienate the fans you broke through to

I'm sure it will

also the bar is pretty low for "breakthrough album" if Kaputt is one

some people like it ... maybe a few more people than past Destroyer records ... which had a pretty minimal fanbase

I mean I love the dude but

yeah the hugeness of this album is being a little overstated

one of the most interesting things about bejar is his desire to switch things up on almost every album, I mean he could've gotten years out of making rubies over and over again

seemed like trouble in dreams was the first real "holding pattern" album he made -- same group of musicians as rubies, same overall vibe?

ha I totally forgot about that record

i kind of forget about it too! though it had some good things on it. it did just feel like a lesser rubies overall.

i'm predicting a reggae inflected follow up to kaputt.

I think a big breakthrough on Kaputt is the 'less is more' approach to lyrics. Bejar's tended towards the verbose, but on this album he's elliptical, suggestive, laconic. I think it suits him well, so I hope he keeps that aspect of it, whichever direction he goes with the music.

there is not a single destroyer song on any of his albums is that is not elliptical, suggestive and laconic

I'll grant you elliptical and suggestive but laconic?

imo

I'll go with less verbose tho "suicide demo" and "bay of pigs" are pretty sprawling

it's kinda like he went from being ck williams to being frank o'hara

there's a sloppiness in his earlier works that got beaten out of kaputt, his style is more offhanded and poised than drunkenly overwhelming

yeah bejar is laconic except when he isn't - he slips into stream-of-consciousness pretty effortlessly at times

i'm predicting a reggae inflected follow up to kaputt.

that would be p dope

http://www.rfimusique.com/musiqueen/images/article/10150.jpg

yeah, wrote that as a joke, but now i can kind of imagine it. and it sounds great!

self-reported demographic info:
I'm one of those who got on the bandwagon with Rubies after being a Pornos fan for a few years—was instantly converted by that album (tho these days it's not my favorite of his), was mildly disappointed by Dreams (meh initially, but it's risen in my estimation as Rubies has fallen—it may be 'Rubies pt.2' but they also counterbalance each other nicely—and "Shooting Rockets" is just amazing, much darker than anything on Rubies+sort of pointing in the 'sprawling/epic' direction), love Kaputt

having slowly worked my way through most of the back-catalog (I only just sought out Your Blues and Streethawk earlier this year), I think there are at least three stone-cold masterpieces (Streethawk, Rubies, and Kaputt—Your Blues may eventually crack this list but probably not until late winter, at the earliest)

I haven't listened to Thief or City of Daughters, and for the moment I don't really feel a pressing need to. but it's nice to know they're there for my future enjoyment!

guy's got such a varied discog it's not surprising there are so many diff takes. until kaputt came along, my opinion of destroyer was your blues is near perfection and then a handful of good cuts on the other records.

I've heard the last four as they've been released and nothing before that. I'd rank them Kaputt > Rubies > Your Blues > Trouble in Dreams.

Never really got into the NPs -- my favorite songs of theirs are the Bejar-sung ones like "Jackie Dressed in Cobras" and "Myriad Harbour."

Yeah sorry Owen I was talking about the album, I didn't listen to the link, although I love a load of stuff that Kaputt is evidently inspired by.

+1 for another destroyer newbie loving kaputt (probably AOTY for me). i've been stanning hard for this album since january and a number of my friends came around to it at their own pace. in fact, i got this email 4 days ago:

Yo Dave.

I've been listening to the Destroyer album that you mentioned to me a while ago (Kaputt). I think it's pretty great, and have been listening to it a lot lately, so I wanted to say: "Thanks!".

ive played this album for friends and they immediately love it....which is unusual.

I want him to go full-on Robert Palmer next.

^^^^
something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1UBS5ZL7Hs

He's somewhat limited without a ton of stage presence and/or charisma, no?

I'd prefer something more in line with his Gap Band cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyD_b3xSzI&feature=related

I like that one too.

The single version of "Hyperactive" has three fourths of Chic as his backing band.

@Matt DC, I got it after the fact! Quick to post, slow to think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR85bAxCX6M

The most interesting comment posted in response to Christgau's review.

Really, Kaputt is so soupy and indirect I don't think comparisons-sans-qua​lifiers to the songful, emotional culture of definitive 80s British music, bad or good, is anything but identifying the forest before you've really gotten a good look at the trees. First off, Roddy Frame, Paddy McAloon and "Black Man Ray" were all trying to communicate things about actual human emotions, with specifics Bejar never bothers with and emotions he has no interest in. Secondly, all three bore an adherence to short, sharp popforms on their sleeves, which allowed each to make the kind of dent in radio Bejar seems totally disinterested in. I think Bejar himself had it right when he threw out Boys and Girls in his arcane press release -- a loungey aural pillow with no pretense of humanity from a prickly alien fantasy of an aging, wearied glam-rock lothario. And citing Neil Tennant, though feyness is a virtue for both, belies the fact that Neil gets through to everybody with a heart via incisive wit and covert emotion, and Bejar's voice only really hits arch, glammy, renny weirdos. So take it then as Boys and Girls with Al Stewart singing over it, since all Al ever was was Neil's dryer, drabber antecedent.

And though the clamor toward comparisons (I saw the phrase "Kenny G meets the Style Council" -- flatteringly! -- in a typically bad one) makes up the bulk of Kaputt's published praise, that's just because sonic departure (and all Bejar's records sound a little different, which is probably where the Bowie stuff comes from since Streethawk sounds nothing like Ziggy) is the only thing really perking the interests of people who have zero no interest in going gaga over one more Dan Bejar record, and who certainly wouldn't begin to know how to differentiate this one's content from that of the last, much less articulate it. I love him myself, but not because I think he's a genius or even because Destroyer particularly compels me -- it's because his obligation toward concise popform and surface melody in the New Pornographers has yielded a kind of hard-fey model that appeals very much to a kid who grew up idolizing dapper Disney villain sidekicks, 18th century attire and the notion of a heterosexual Joel Grey, and I'm forever searching for that ideal in records whose words are never layered or clever enough to evoke Dylan and whose melodies are never as ebullient as I wish they were. But I've come to love Bejar for merely doing what he does, which is different than what everybody else does, over and over and over despite its inability to fit snugly into any facet of pop's critical model.

So since, again, most criticism I've read about Kaputt so far hinges on how it deliberately sounds like a dream memory of the 80s, and how cool/uncool that is, Christgau in his infinite wisdom is the first person I've seen to craft two lines of any aptitude about the project: "Mix in a smoove groove suitable for deflecting others' disinterest in one's historical anomie and you have intelligent lounge music for 21st-century depressives" and "this is how the pleasure principle feels to an alienated depressive resigned to engaging the world on his own perverse terms". These are the answers all those internet kids were looking for before they decided to just rave out their general observations, and the only common conclusions anybody's likely (much less supposed) to find in Kaputt.

I think that Christgau review is pretty weak, not to mention repetitive. In one short paragraph, he twice uses the phrases: "lacks the heart and chops", "historical anomie" and "depressive". I hear lots of heart and chops, and Bejar doesn't sound very depressed on "Blue Eyes", for instance.

The Dean's least attractive routine, playing armchair shrink, he did the same thing although much harsher with GBV (and their fans!).

GBV deserve nothing less

He did the same thing with Adele too: "I can feel a down-to-earth plus-size who touches women who look a lot more like her than like Beyoncé or Katy Perry" - uh, maybe people like her for other reasons than her figure?

I heard these songs on the radio a lot this year and they didn't do anything for me but suddenly this very moving. if I never liked the new pornographers should I bother w/ any of the rest of his stuff?

suddenly finding this*

yeah, listen to 'rubies'

If the New Pornos sounded like Bejar's pre-Kaputt material I'd never have given this record a chance.

Also try "Your Blues".