Destroyer – Heaven, London – 28/6/11
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Bands noted for their tendencies towards the verbose can go either way, either turning between song banter in to some of the most memorable parts of their set (Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen) or hardly acknowledging the audience at all, save for the odd ‘thank you’(Joanna Newsom, PJ Harvey). Destroyer’s Dan Bejar increasingly makes a case for being mentioned in the same breath as any member of that legendary quartet, but in terms of his approach to a crowd, tonight he distinctly places himself in the latter camp.
Yet here is a man who doesn’t so much let the music do the talking, but does his talking over the music – then, and only then. Whether you’re getting an insight in to the guy himself, a character or situation he’s created, or indeed something else entirely is left up to you to decide. Indeed, it’s all part of fun, and for a band currently being talked about as if they’re a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape rather than a rock and roll outfit, one might be surprised at the amount of fun there is to be had at a Destroyer gig these days.
Granted, it’s not a swinging from the rafters sort of good time you’re being offered, but a part in a gorgeous serenity that sets in from the opening swoon of ‘Chinatown’ and like a medicinal fog doesn’t lift until the final strains of the closing, ten minute epic ‘Bay of Pigs’ have done their work. In a recent interview with Rockfeedback, Bejar spoke of how whilst previous records like Destroyer’s Rubies were “supposed to at least sound like 5 people playing instruments and singing in a room”, recent masterpiece Kaputt (of which all but one track is played tonight) was quite a different affair – “Whatever the opposite of that space and sound is, Kaputt strove to inhabit it.” But tonight, Destroyer are a band, playing instruments and singing in a room. I saw it, with my own brown eyes. Yet if I hadn’t been gazing at it myself, I’d have believed you if you told me I was just hearing a great record.
It’s not that these songs sound identical to how they do on Kaputt – the added haze they’re provided by these arrangements works a treat, and Bejar’s lyrics are delivered both with his tongue thrust more forcefully in to his cheek and his heart more prominently on his sleeve. The idea behind Kaputt has been seen by many as celebrating records where the songwriting is incredible but the production is unfashionably smooth (Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man¸ Roxy Music’s Avalon). Tonight, they not only recreate but amplify that smoothness to perfection. It sounds better than a band playing songs in a room has to these ears in a while.
He might be at pains to suggest otherwise, but in essence Destroyer is Dan Bejar, Dan Bejar is Destroyer, and the other people in Destroyer are in Dan Bejar’s band. Sure, apart from shaking a tambourine around, he never plays an instrument, but his work on the actual sonics of the evening seems to have been done way in advance – this a collection of musicians who have been arranged magnificently, with levels of attention to detail in the composite sound being dizzyingly high.
Such is the nature of the new material, saxophones and trumpets play all the time, on every tune – even on non-Kaputt numbers like ‘Painter In Your Pocket’ and ‘3000 Flowers’ where they take the place of the guitar solos that one had previously assumed the songs couldn’t do without. For such a brass-heavy sound to succeed with a band this many in number, the mix needs to be spot on, and despite our recent gripes with the quality of it at this very venue, it’s juuuuuust right this evening. One suspects Mr. Bejar may have had a word.
Despite our suspicions that he’s quite the controlling band leader, and the fact that he neither says nor plays a thing, Bejar is a totally engaging frontman – swigging booze and dramatically throwing page after page of lyrics on to the floor, reading every line carefully but instilling each syllable with just the right amount of malice, humour or feeling. He mightn’t take any notice of the crowd, but so effective is the aforementioned fog he has his band create that in honesty, neither do I. It’s not ‘til we shuffle out that I start to notice I’ve been in a room populated solely by really unfashionable looking people. But it seems fitting, given the love shown to not-of-this-time music by the musicians we’ve just spent the past hour or so in the company of. This isn’t cool, any of it. But it is awesome.
SETLIST: Chinatown / Blue Eyes / My Favorite Year / Downtown / Savage Night At The Opera / Kaputt / It's Gonna Take An Airplane / Painter In Your Pocket / 3000 Flowers / Suicide Demo For Kara Walker / Song For America / ENCORE: Bay Of Pigs
Artists in this article: Destroyer
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