Destroyer
Words & Music
Published by Under The Radar
Destroyer
Words & Music
Published by Under The Radar
Destroyer
has long been regarded as principal Daniel Bejar and whomever he’s playing
with. The Vancouver-based sometimes-New Pornographer has been making records
under the moniker since the mid ’90s, when he alone four-tracked his debut
full-length, We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge. But for album
number seven, this year’s Destroyer’s Rubies, Bejar assembled
a lineup he sees as permanent enough for at least another record, making Destroyer,
more than ever, a band (Bejar on vocals and guitars, Ted Bois on keys, Nicolas
Bragg on guitars, Tim Loewen on bass, Scott Morgan on drums and sax, and Fisher
Rose on vibraphone and trumpet).
“The involvement of other band members is complete,” says Bejar.
“I might have a bit more of a hand in the final mix, but everyone comes
up with their own parts… Usually you just have to try playing with people
whose style you trust and really like.”
Destroyer’s collective style is pop music. The big, boundless kind that
brings overdubs and book smarts to the task of building a better hook. Melodies
are simple and many, arranged quite unaccidentally for all manner of string,
key and horn. It’s a gripping musical conversation even when Bejar isn’t
stumping lyric listeners with long strings of words that at the very least sound
incredibly good together (“Ride towards the dawn, Quicksilver on the side
of nothing/Never had a chance/Never had to choose Your Blood versus Your Blues”).
“I have to be interested, first and foremost, in emotional impact,”
he says. “Otherwise my position, especially as a musician, would be super-tragic.
I'm still trying to get my head around the way people throw around the word
‘meaning.’ Something means something to me cause it matters something
to me, not ’cause I know that ‘firetruck’ is the long form
of ‘red.’ People know what I'm talking about, even if their interpretations
of individual lines might vary a bit.”
Whatever Bejar means to get across, he does it with soapbox conviction, pushing
a front end full of syllables yet finishing on a dime, just in time for some
gorgeous instrumental swell. “Been thinking about that a lot lately,”
he says, “what a slave to the rhythm I am, how much writing that seems
so good glowing on the computer screen turns to utter shit when it fails to
roll off the tongue. Some of the best things I've written gather dust, ’cause
singing turns them into total clunkers. But it really can't be any other way.”
If Bejar’s language brings to mind the prophet’s gift to which Dylan
attributes his best stuff, it’s a testament to the effortlessness of its
flow. I ask Bejar if he free-associates; he says he works at it. (He does his
interviews via email because he thinks he doesn’t represent himself well
over the phone.)
He explains: “Everything's crafted if it ends up in a song… If by
free-associative you mean the fact that I don't mind spaces between images and
actions and other images and other actions, then you'd be right. I'm pretty
sure they still teach you that the spaces are where you stick the ‘poetry.’
Could be wrong about that, though.”
Right or wrong, it’s a class he needn’t bother taking.