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

this is so sick: https://youtu.be/06ZLNLz2yGI

the song and the video

bejar is an underrated swearer

His weedy fucking al stewart voice.

all three tracks from this so far have been great. i'm expecting this to be one of my very favourite Destroyer records, up there with Kaputt

Hmm.

fuck these singles are so good. i like all the videos too.

ken and poison season never clicked with me, worth going back to?

i really like poison season, it's one of his best

ken is decent but a little more inconsistent and suffers from not having his fantastic band from kaputt and poison season around. the live versions of most of the tracks are significantly better

I'm loving the new songs! Some lyrics on instagram appeared for an unreleased track from 2009, which is colloquially known as 'It Aint Easy Being Baby' so I'm wondering if that one made it with a different title. Do check out Poison Season and ken when you can, they're both great albums imo. There's a new interview with Bejar on pitchfork also.

wasn't really into the last 2 but so hype for this

Cue Synthetizer is such an earworm. It keeps getting stuck in my head, particularly those guitar parts.

“No I don’t hope to”

Yeah I think "Cue Synthesiser" is the best yet.

That Pitchfork profile was great, I didn’t know any of that stuff about Bejar working with David Berman on that lost record.

https://www.stereogum.com/2070605/dan-bejar-interview-destroyer-have-we-met/franchises/interview/
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/destroyer-have-we-met-interview-930839/

a few more pretty interesting interviews

quite a bit about the production choices in this Quietus interview https://thequietus.com/articles/27717-destroyer-dan-bejar-interview-have-we-met-2020

album is very very good, probably second only to Kaputt in his catalogue. really gorgeous soundscapes

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/destroyer-dan-bejar-nine-favourite-songs

this is another great piece

i liked that pitchfork piece but couldn't help but note that there's a mark's work warehouse in the kingsgate mall where you could definitely get green socks

Could not for the life of me think who he sounded like then it came to me in a flash....

https://youtu.be/iQamw4xxxHY

new album is out!

Just look at the world around you...
Actually, no, don’t look!

famous novelist brothers shithead no. 1 and shithead no. 2

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

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

yeah i really love this album

gets pretty close to being a kaputt sequel at times but always keeps things weirder

where are you hearing it?

it's floating around out there, unusually early for these days

For me, his last really convincing record was Trouble in Dreams. His stylistic shift with Kaputt made sense, but the actual songs and lyrics since then have felt like Destroyer-by-numbers. I think he feels this shift, he's alluded to a change in mindset around 2010.

imo his only weak album since kaputt is ken.

i think the shift in sound from his previous folk/glam thing to the new sophisti-pop-adjacent palette from kaputt onwards has been a big improvement & fit his vocal approach much better. but i don't really love his old material or anything, i only really go back to your blues & rubies, so i can understand how someone who absolutely loved what he was doing before could be let down by his newer sound.

I wouldn't say I dislike the new style; I think the songwriting changed at the same time, but the two didn't have to go hand-in-hand. His lyrics don't hang together like they used to, it's like they're off-the-cuff jottings meant to sound as "Destroyer" as possible.
Aside from maybe one or two songs per record, all I get from them is semi-cynical mood music.

i haven't heard full destroyer albums for a while because i'm lazy but i'm obsessed with "crimson tide" and feel like i could also be with the new single. i think the lyrics for both are incredible. the new one manages to achieve this encapsulation of what it's like to drive across the desert now in 2022 when the climate is changing and the world is full of crazy shit in one line. the opening of "crimson tide" through the line about being on the lookout for anything that moves is just devastating. i don't hear cynicism, i hear a bunch of different strategies for survival.

also the "crimson tide" video is so so good.

the change in lyrical approach he's discussed was just becoming more restrained, so there's less of him trying to cram his dense poetry into his rock songs, which allows him to take a more relaxed vocal approach. he's gone back and forth with exactly how dense vs. relaxed he gets.

his lyrics have their ups and downs, but i'm not a huge lyrics person. sometimes they're very compelling and sometimes they're basically self-parody but still endearing. i can get how if you loved his older, denser lyrical approach you'd be disappointed by his move away from that post-trouble in dreams.

poison season was pretty dense, wasn't it? i didn't return to that one much, felt like a self-conscious throwback

Another new one. Didn't realise the album had already leaked

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

Eat the Wine is closer to the vibes of the whole record than Tintoretto. Also, it probably has the least interesting lyrics of the record, it's a groove tho.

Anyone who's eaten wine with fork and knife on a Saturday night will relate.

I still think it's good mind you, maybe because it doesn't keep up with the three opening lines which are fantastic: Unfounded accusations // "Ruff, ruff" goes the beagle to the terrier // Been meaning to wear my hair like this for ages.

The rhythm section throughout the record is some of the best they've done. I am no musician so my understanding of these things are limited, but it sounds like from Have We Met they found a formula that just elevates everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3hFZkFgs-g

video for "june", one of the real highlights on this album

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/destroyer-labyrinthitis/

and a good interview, though once again he mentions they started out with a cooler idea than what they ended up with:

"they set out to make what Bejar calls a “high-energy Cher record.” They imagined an unceasing four-on-the-floor beat going through an entire side of the LP, with Bejar spewing his cryptic musings between the pounding bass hits."

you can hear the remnants of that idea in "suffer" and "all my pretty dresses" (a little of which is at the end of that video) but they didn't end up really going for it.

dump him!

i like the concepts and the lyrics but i'm not feeling the music tbh

i take it back, the music is good

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!"