Related posts

Description

On August 28, Destroyer returns with a new full-length, Poison Season. In addition, a two-song 12-inch that includes a remix of album track Forces From Above and the orchestral version of Times Square, Poison Season will be released as a companion to the record. Poison Season opens with Vancouver native Dan Bejar swathed in Hunky Dory strings. Hes a dashboard Bowie surveying four wracked charactersJesus, Jacob, Judy, Jacksimultaneously Biblical and musical theatre. This bittersweet, Times Square-set fanfare is reprised twice more on the recordfirst as swaying, saxophone-stoked street-rock and then finally as a curtain-closing reverie. The first and last songs are actually one song tracked live with quintet, explains their author. I even sang with the band. That song always swung between super austere and super mid-70s Springsteen/Bowie street-rock. In the end, I decided I wanted both. Couldnt really figure out a way to sequence the orchestral version within the record, so I decided to carve it up as a book-ending motif, with the rock version squarely in the middle. Mr. Bejar has long displayed a chameleonic instinct for change while maintaining a unified aesthetic (rather than just pinballing between reference points). No two records sound the same, but theyre always uniquely Destroyer. His latest incarnation often appears to take sonic cues from a distinctly British (usually Scottish, to be precise) strain of sophisti-pop: you might hear traces of Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout, Orange Juice, or The Blow Monkeys. These songs merge a casual literary brilliance with intense melodic verve, nimble arrangements, and a certain blue-eyed soul sadness.