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

this album is GREAT. best since Kaputt.

xp I opened the thread to give it up for "Clickety-clack, the music makes a musical sound" and read ufo's post at the exact moment Dan was singing those words ^_^

Ok this is dope

quite the PR blitz this time around. Don't recall this much attention paid to the previous two.

Every article I read mentioned how this started out as an idea to make a dark 'Y2K' record but in the end that only seems to come through for me in the lyrics. Musically this has a ton of really lovely moments. Maybe some of the synths and drums but this reminds me more of Kaputt era than anything else.Less emphasis on the yacht rock influences. Loving it.

this is good, not as good as kaputt or rubies but still top shelf destroyer

yeah, this is really good, I've only listened to it once but this seems better than 'ken' (which was good, but not a bit disappointing after Kaputt and Poison Season (which I still think is his best)).

in a lot of the interviews he's said that the 'Y2K' thing was just that their initial plan was to try to make a late-90's trip-hop record but they quickly gave up because they had no idea what they were doing and that he wasn't sure how that became such a prominent part of the press release. would still love to hear a trip-hop destroyer record though

nicolas bragg has to be one of my favourite guitarists at this point

haven't heard this but what a title!

this album is really great

"It Just Doesn't Happen" is easily my favorite so far

The first three songs really

One listen = ❤️

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

Great album

First listen and like it very much. Love the cover.

I kinda wish Bejar would make a soundtrack or an album of instrumental stuff. The title track is gorgeous.

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

June is good

Looking forward to the instrumentation album

*instrumental

The new song/video is genius. I'm excited for 'all my pretty dresses' too

album is out, it's still excellent, one of his very best

"it's in your heart now" is like, if robert fripp played lead on something from disintegration

sounds good on first listen

Has it been put back in the U.K.?

looks like the uk physical release is delayed until june?

https://bellaunion.ochre.store/release/266901-destroyer-labyrinthitis

"it's in your heart now" is like, if robert fripp played lead on something from disintegration

Late getting around to this one and haven't finished my first listen yet, but I wanted to call this post out as being very much otm.

I'm recent to Destroyer, having only heard Kaputt this year, and only now another with his latest, but it just struck me on "Tintoretto" that there's a David Tibet aspect to him. The mystique, the spoken word full of pathos and disassociated, attraction for piano and ambient/dance electronics, formula applicable to any sound, the fan obsession. Maybe a bit of a stretch. Anyway, I like the new album.

Obsessed with the second half of ‘June’.

new album is my fav thing he's done in a long time

its good feels like a logical extension of the last one but more uptempo

"all my pretty dresses" an instant fav, beautiful song

someone should make a soundboard that embeds additional gratuitous sound effects into "It Takes a Thief."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2f_7OCWXtc

full show video

wish audio was better

Saw him live for the first time recently. He seemed a little shy at first. It took him a few songs to get in the zone (the zone is brimstone and wire), but once he got there he was pretty good. He gave me the biggest introvert vibes I've ever seen off a live performer of his caliber.

They played actually very little of the new album! But the production on the record is so weird that I guess it'd be hard to reproduce live. It was cool to hear a lot of older material. They closed the show with a couple Kaputt tracks, which made me happy.

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!"