Destroyer- Archer On The Beach EP

After hearing Archer On The Beach, I feel confident in saying that no one quite makes music like Dan Bejar. He comfortably fits into two stylistically different side projects/supergroups: the power-pop of the New Pornographers and the experimental indie rock of Swan Lake. Yet when it comes to his band, Destroyer, it's increasingly difficult to pin down where he's going. His last two albums, Destroyer's Rubies and Trouble In Dreams, perfected and began to ossify his mid-60s-Bob-Dylan-meets-70s-David-Bowie style. Then, for last year's Bay Of Pigs EP, he seemed to toss everything out the window and begin anew. The title track was a 13 minute synth-pop/groove-rock marathon, with plenty of ambience and detachment that carried over more overtly in the other song, 'Ravers', a remake of the song 'Rivers' from Trouble In Dreams.

With Archer On The Beach, Bejar has taken his music to an even more fractured and atmospheric direction. Whether this will be the predominant style on the forthcoming Kaputt album is unknown, but it has certainly raised my expectations and curiosity about it. The two songs on this EP were collaborations with ambient/electronic artists Tim Hecker and Loscil, the latter of whom is the drummer in Destroyer, and who had previously contributed some kind of remix or remake to the Destroyer's Rubies vinyl release. Anyway, Archer On The Beach is interesting because it's arguably not a Destroyer release to begin with. Bejar contributes only lyrics/vocals while the music is entirely from the other two musicians. It seems odd, then, that this was released under the Destroyer name, since other than Bejar, none of the Destroyer band members appear. Well, Loscil does, but he appears under his ambient/electronic name and not his real name as he does when drumming for Destroyer. Confused yet?

The title track of this EP plays like a morose ballad, with lightning storm sound effects, crowd noise, and echoing keyboards creating a foreboding atmosphere that never quite goes anywhere but never feels repetitive. 'Grief Point', meanwhile, is either a remake or reworking of the Loscil song 'The Making Of Grief Point', on which Bejar had appeared. I'm pretty sure it's the same vocal take, and to confuse matters further, the Merge Records website description of this EP says that 'Grief Point' was the original working title of a song called 'Bay Of Pigs.' Whether that was the same 'Bay Of Pigs' from the last EP...well, who knows? Destroyer has so often remade or retitled his songs, and his discography is chock full of meta-references, that it feels futile to figure it out.

What I do know is that Bejar must be going through some kind of artistic crisis not unlike what Sufjan Stevens seems to have gone through over the past four years. Again, according to the Merge site, 'Grief Point' was the first song Bejar made after deciding to never record again. Is this statement hyperbole? Seeing as how the title of the forthcoming album is Kaputt and the cover features the Destroyer band near a cliff (possibly the titular Grief Point?), seemingly considering whether they should jump or not, it strikes me as appropriate that this song seems to be about how he doesn't care about making music any more, and by extension, how pointless making any art is. It's also his first spoken word performance as Destroyer: “I have lost interest in music...it is horrible,” he intones, before the sound of a drink being poured jokingly(?) follows. All the while, the music is nothing more than some unobtrusive synth sounds that are just barely more accompaniment than pure silence, as well as some musique concrete stuff, such as dogs barking and the sound of Bejar shifting in his seat.

It's hard to say how true this spoken word piece is, since Bejar has made a career of writing about all sorts of characters and situations that he has no personal stake in. Is he just messing with us, or is he serious about quitting music? Either way, this EP is a fascinating listen, albeit not a wholly satisfying one. I feel like all of Bejar's releases are key pieces of his mystique, but where Bay Of Pigs was engaging and enjoyable, Archer On The Beach is too given over to ambience and atmosphere, and a questioning of his creative impulse, to feel substantial or rewarding. Had this EP been released under a different name, or with top billing given to the two other artists involved, I may have been more lenient. As it is, though, Archer will only interest the Destroyer faithful, and will only satisfy about half of those.

3 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Your Blues

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's one of her masterpieces, but PJ Harvey's last album, White Chalk, was a fascinating detour. Whereas before she was always the alt-rock guitar playing goddess, on that album she primarily plays piano, crafting songs that sound like what I imagine Tori Amos at her best must be like. There's a quote on the Wikipedia page for the album attributed to an interview in the magazine The Wire where she says “the great thing about learning a new instrument from scratch is that it [...] liberates your imagination.” I couldn't help but think of Destroyer's Your Blues when I read this quote, because Dan Bejar's sudden use of MIDI instruments and synthesizers on the album now strikes me as a similar situation.

Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn't heard any of Destroyer's pre-Your Blues albums, so the divide between it and the rest of his discography wasn't as sharp as it would've been. However, now that I know the rest of his albums fall into the 70s-David-Bowie-meets-mid-60s-Bob-Dylan sound, Your Blues is all the curvier of a curveball to throw. Still, last year's Bay Of Pigs EP and the recent Archer On The Beach, which promises to be even more ambient/electronic than the former (though I haven't heard it yet, so we'll see), show that the name Destroyer isn't synonymous with a certain kind of music. But I digress.

Returning to the PJ Harvey quote above: I feel like by forcing himself to give up his backing band and focus primarily on MIDI instrumentation and synthesizers, Bejar become a much more imaginative and skilled songwriter. Oh, sure, contributing songs to the New Pornographers helped, and his lyrics have always been amongst the most dense, intriguing, and self-referential in all of music—I never get tired of reminding people that he has a Wiki devoted to his lyrics—but I think it was only on Your Blues and after that his gift for music bloomed. Of course I have to immediately say that I love all of his earlier stuff that I've heard, but to me they don't match his post-Blues material in terms of arrangements and hooks.

This record's synth-orchestral pop aesthetic is what makes Your Blues the secret masterpiece of Destroyer's career. Since I normally don't go for music that has a cheesy synth-pop or lame MIDI-based sound to it, I was relieved to find Your Blues never sounds cheap or retro. 'An Actor's Revenge' has all the pomp and drama of the best baroque pop music of the past, albeit played on synthesizers instead of actual orchestral instruments. What should sound like schmaltzy plucked strings and over-done tympani hits on 'From Oakland To Warsaw' actually come off as sympathetic and appropriate accompaniment. Yet as brilliant as Your Blues is, I do prefer some of the Frog Eyes-backed reworkings of these songs on the Notorious Lightning & Other Works EP. In particular, on this album 'Don't Become The Thing You Hated' simply has too many unnecessary layers of sound during its middle section. 'Notorious Lightning' is the other prime candidate for best makeover, since it doesn't sound right to me when it's not a nine minute raucous guitar epic. OK, OK, this is supposed to be a review of Your Blues and not a comparison contest with an EP. Moving on...

Your Blues is that rare record that takes huge chances and delivers every step of the way. It is most assuredly the sort of music that will immediately turn off even longtime fans who can't get past the MIDI/synth instruments. I can understand that. Yet when I called it his secret masterpiece, I meant it, because those listeners who get what it is Bejar was going for on this album will truly love it. It may not become your go-to Destroyer album to throw on in an indecisive moment, but it may become your new favorite album for a week or two. And that, in my experience, is something worth investigating.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Bay Of Pigs EP

Longtime Destroyer fans should by now be used to Dan Bejar's wandering muse. His stylistic changes aren't as extreme as, say, Beck's, and aren't as (in)famous as David Bowie, an artist whom Bejar is often compared to. Bejar's best known one-two curveball was 2004's Your Blues album, a synth/keyboard orchestral-pop masterpiece, along with the subsequent tour and EP (the underrated Notorious Lightning & Other Works) with the unhinged Frog Eyes as a backing band. Destroyer's next two albums were relatively straightforward indie rock/singer songwriter stuff, so I'd have to assume Bay Of Pigs came as a shock to newer fans.

At any rate, Bay Of Pigs returns Bejar, at least conceptually, to the synth/keyboard heavy Your Blues. But where that album had a purposefully cheap MIDI sound to it, this one sounds clean, slick, modern, and like the work of a full band instead of a single lab rat. Various reviews have described the title track as disco-ish, but to these ears it's more like 80s synth-pop with a good sense of groove than it is some Saturday Night Fever dreck. At thirteen-and-a-half minutes, it also has time for eerie atmospheric intro and outro sections, and lets Bejar go on and on in his 'Tangled Up In Blue'/Dylan-esque storyteller mode, weaving yet more references to characters, places, and events from his body of work, as well as adding some new ones. 'Ravers', meanwhile, is a ghostly remake of the barrelhouse piano based rock of 'Rivers' from Destroyer's 2008 album, Trouble In Dreams. I do prefer the original version, since the words and phrasing style of it feel forced and awkward in this droning, ambient setting. But at the same time, I've never heard a song like this from Bejar before, and his distinctive vocals and lyrics work shockingly well in said setting. It's novel, sure, but not a novelty.

The same could be said for the EP. Whether Bejar pursues this direction for his next album with Destroyer is impossible to say. I hope he does, for whatever that's worth. Well, whatever does happen, it won't change the fact that Bay Of Pigs is a brilliant, challenging-but-rewarding EP.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Notorious Lightning and Other Works EP

Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar) got away with one of the most fascinating conceits in modern music with his Your Blues album. On paper, I should hate it: an album recorded with synthesizers and keyboards instead of a band. However, the result was a stunning synth-orchestra with some of Destroyer's best songs and arrangements yet. Once you get past the instruments, it's a thrilling pop album. Then, when it came time to tour the album, Bejar pulled another trick out of his sleeve: his backing band wouldn't be a battery of keyboards, MIDI controllers, and sequencers, but Canada's off-kilter rock band Frog Eyes.

Clearly Bejar enjoyed this tour and collaboration, because not only did he issue this EP of studio versions of those live arrangements but also continued to work with Frog Eyes's leader Carey Mercer, most specifically in the Swan Lake project with sometime-Frog Eyes member/Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade member Spencer Krug.

The inevitable question becomes: are these re-imaginings superior to the original?? This is a problematic question for a few reasons. One, it implies that one has to be superior to the other. You can like both the subtle MIDI orchestra of the Your Blues album and the reptilian brain-stem distortions of Notorious Lightning. Two, the question can be taken on a case-by-case basis. I prefer the surging, guitar powered 'An Actor's Revenge' to the original, but 'The Music Lovers' fares better as a delicate sip of synthesizer wine than it does a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser. Third, and lastly, the question brings up another question: is this how Bejar wanted the songs to sound originally, but decided to re-do them in a synthesizer orchestra?? Basically, the possibility exists that he always wanted the songs to be careening-off-the-rails and Your Blues was the re-imagining rather than vice versa.

Anyway, even if you don't like any of these Frog Eyes-enhanced versions, this is ideally what I want from an EP. So many bands squander the potential of this musical format, either by releasing glorified singles or weighing them down with unnecessary remixes. Rather, I like EPs made up of all new material. Maybe the band recorded some good stuff, but it didn't function in the context of an album proper. Or maybe, as in this case, the songs twisted into strange new shapes during the tour and merited an official studio document.

At any rate, I find Notorious Lightning and Other Works a fascinating listen even if, ultimately, the Your Blues album is the true masterpiece of the two. Again, that's not to say I can't like both. There's room in my life for both the full band stomp of the Notorious 'Your Blues' (with surprisingly ornate keyboards that hint back to the original version) and the reverb drenched, synthesizer-flugelhorn led Your Blues version. It's strange for me to end a review this way, but if you don't like this EP, you should try the album. And if you simply can't get past the MIDI-ified album, then try the EP.

The New Pornographers- Challengers

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not critical enough of music. Lately I find myself writing more positive reviews than negative ones and I begin to wonder if I'm losing my edge; am I going soft, being too nice and accommodating to albums that, during the heat of youth, I would have dismantled with precision?? Perhaps it's just that I'm more selective about what I bother to review--why say anything if all you have is nothing nice?? Bad reviews are fun to write, but I actually find they're more difficult to write because it's harder to articulately posit criticisms than it is to repeat "boy, this sucks" in increasing volume and tenacity.

I bring this up because Challengers is one of very few recent albums I've flat out not enjoyed and I've had trouble getting my head around precisely why I don't think it's good. I wish it were as simple as "it's not as good as their other albums" because then we could just drop that on the table and nod, offering up witticisms about taste being subjective before we put on Led Zeppelin IV and open some beers. But while it is indeed not as good as their other albums, there's more going on in Challengers than just an example of an inferior sequel.

I think everyone can agree that the first three New Pornographers albums are of-a-piece. They don't sound identical, but they're all working from the same indie pop/power pop blueprint. They contain some of the catchiest and most addictive songs from this decade, and I can't say enough good things about them. At the same time that the New Pornographers "supergroup" was cranking them out, the members of the band--including A.C. Newman (aka Carl Newman), Neko Case, and Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar)--were producing really great 'solo' albums. At some point after the release of the third New Pornographers album, Twin Cinema, the solo work began to infect the "supergroup", and it was not for the best.

I don't want to say that the only thing the New Pornographers are good at is their aesthetic as described above, but, well, Challengers doesn't prove that they're good at anything else. It sounds like A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder, Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, and Destroyer's Rubies smashed together in a car crash with Twin Cinema. The mix isn't so much a White Album-esque "each Beatle with the other three backing him" vibe as it is a watered down, confused mess. Even the songs which do play to their strengths--like 'All Of The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth' and 'Mutiny, I Promise You'--strike me as b-side quality. Elsewhere, I can't help but wonder what 'Go Places', 'My Rights Versus Yours', and 'Entering White Cecilia' might have sounded like if delivered on the respective 'solo' wings of Neko Case, A.C. Newman, and Destroyer.

What Challengers lacks most of all is hooks. "Hooks" are a very vague idea that everyone understands but nobody can explain, and this album is a great example of what not having hooks can do to your album. The first three New Pornographers albums had hooks spilling out of the speakers. The solo albums mentioned above have plenty of hooks without having to always be the "go for the throat!!" power pop of the New Pornographers. Yet even after listening to Challengers for the fifth time, I still don't remember much of anything about it. Normally the Dan Bejar songs are the highlights of a New Pornographers album: 'Jackie, Dressed In Cobras' is one of my favorite songs, ever, from any band or album. However, his contributions to Challengers are his weakest yet, a weakness that would begin to seem symptomatic with his kind-of-meh, hit-or-miss new album Trouble In Dreams. Meanwhile Carl Newman steadfastly tries to remake his solo album in this setting and comes up wanting again and again. Part of the blame for the hook-less can be placed at the feet of the increasingly dominant acoustic/orchestral sound the band began to head in during Twin Cinema. I think it needs to be said: acoustic instruments don't belong in the New Pornographers. At least not as the main instruments.

I hesitate to be too negative toward Challengers because I have ample evidence in and out of the discography of the New Pornographers that they're capable of incredible things. I keep telling myself that maybe it's me and not the album; maybe I don't "get it" yet and on this listen I will. But this is not a difficult album: there is nothing to get. It is what it is, and what Challengers happens to be is a creative misstep, not a disaster but a true disappointment if there ever was one.

Swan Lake- Beast Moans

People like to throw around the term "supergroup" as if it actually means anything anymore. Every time a few guys from other bands start a band together you hear that they're a "supergroup." I don't know about you, but the idea of "supergroups" becomes totally unappealing once you've listened to great musicians or artists thrown together at benefit concerts or music festivals. The cold realization is that it takes time for people to get used to each other, and it is exceedingly rare that people who've never collaborated together could produce something substantial on the first try. It's fun to make up dream bands--Hendrix on guitar, John Bonham on drums, that kind of thing--but the truth is they play entirely different styles and would take awhile to either learn to play in each other's framework or create something wholly new.

So, then, Swan Lake, which combines Dan Bejar (solo artist under the moniker Destroyer and the secret weapon of the New Pornographers), Carey Mercer (brilliant howler of Frog Eyes), and Spencer Krug (sometime member of Frog Eyes, main force behind Sunset Rubdown, and a significant creative half of Wolf Parade). At first glance this line up wouldn't make sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Destroyer's work. After releasing the synth/keyboard based Your Blues album, Dan Bejar decided to tour with Frog Eyes as his backing band, transforming the orchestrated and synthetic affectations of the album into a rocking and rollicking barnstormer. If you've ever seen Bob Dylan live in the past few years and witnessed how his band transforms the songs into new and fantastic shapes, then you have an idea of what the Frog Eyes pairing was like. Anyway, Bejar, Mercer, and Krug enjoyed the tour so much they recorded an EP under the Destroyer name, Notorious Lightning and Other Works, and made plans to record an album together. Thus, a year or so later, the Swan Lake project was born.

Where exactly does Beast Moans fall on the scale between "disparate musicians taking turns playing in each other's style" and "creating something unlike anything the three have produced before"?? Well, more of the former than the latter. Imagine me saying that with a tinge of disappointment and you've got the general crux of the issue. Beast Moans is a bit of a slippery album because I feel like Dan Bejar and Spencer Krug make better collaborators than either of them with Carey Mercer. This is no knock on Mercer or Frog Eyes, but that band's style is so distinctive and unhinged that one gets the feeling that here Bejar and Krug help make Mercer's songs more coherent and traditional while he, in turn, makes their's more unpredictable and odd. Consider 'The Partisan But He's Got To Know', which is just a typically great Frog Eyes song until Bejar and Mercer trade lines toward the end, adding much needed flavor syrup to the reverby Slushie that is Frog Eyes. Metaphorically speaking. On the other hand, consider album closer 'Shooting Rockets' which, though written by Bejar, is an apocalyptic dirge buried beneath dense guitar soundscapes and clattering percussion. Compare this to the version of the song that appears on Bejar's recent Destroyer album Trouble In Dreams in a cleaned up and much more enjoyable form.

Some new ideas do appear on Beast Moans, and promise greater things on the inevitable, all-but-released next album. After Bejar's magnificent 'The Freedom', the song segues into 'Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914', which has a title like a Frog Eyes song but belongs to each member equally. Over a repetitive drum beat, glistening guitars, and downright beautiful keyboards, Krug and Bejar harmonize very well before trading off vocals to Mercer, who is commended for singing in a fashion somewhat unlike his usual style, much calmer and almost speak-singing.'Pleasure Vessels', though Mercer penned, switches between reverb drenched walls of sound and clean guitar chording, a mood piece as much as a song.

It's always hard for me to review a "supergroup" album and not declare a MVP, so to speak. Were I forced, the easy victor on this album is Spencer Krug. Though we all loved the Wolf Parade album and Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming, he really proves himself one of the best and most consistent songwriters of the Canadian indie scene with 'All Fires' and 'Are You Swimming In Her Pools?' which combine his love of repeating everyday phrases with poetic/romantic imagery. The latter presents such gems as "please is not a word I ever said quietly" and "I hope you find your mother there" alongside the flat-out amazing second 'verse' which begins with the following three lines:

Are you running up her riverbeds and navigating long fingers of a hand?
Because fingers make the hand
And rivers make the land

I want to give some credit to Mercer and Bejar, but their best works lies elsewhere as far as I'm concerned, and I feel like their best contributions to the album are still overshadowed by Krug. It's true that they probably pushed Krug to this level and/or helped him realize his songs better than he could have with his other bands, but one gets the distinct impression they didn't bring their "A" game to the proceedings. Props to Bejar, though, for managing anything as good as 'A Venue Called Rubella' while he's also busy dividing his output between Destroyer and New Pornographers.

Though I do genuinely enjoy this album, I also feel that the next thing they release will be even better. Other than Bejar, who played it safe on his last two releases to diminishing results (I'm still baffled that people like Challengers by the New Pornographers so much), Mercer and Krug seemed to take the lessons of this collaboration to heart. Both of the last albums by Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown were phenomenal, and represented great artistic steps--if not a leap--for each. Whatever the future holds for the Swan Lake project, rest assured that its first product, Beast Moans, is well worth seeking out for fans of any of the three minds behind it.