26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion

DESTROYER'S RUBIES

Written Tuesday, February 21 by J.R.Knight | E-mail this post

Anyone who knows me knows that I have about as much connection to popular culture and music as my toaster does to The Peloponnesian War. Which is to say, not much. If you want a more connected DJ, one who say knows his Artic Monkey from he’s asshole I suggest checking out this post.

No, I’m more of an obscure and deserted loner type. Anyway, that’s what I’m telling the chicks so back up off me.

That’s why this post is going to be soooooo interesting…

There’s more after the jump!

I’m going to recommend a brand new record that I think will be widely enjoyed and will create world peace. A true Novus Ordo Seclorum. Lasting world peace… Real world peace....

If you haven’t heard of Destroyer or Dan Bejar there’s only one good reason, blind (bad) luck. You can’t hear about everybody and none of his albums have produced the sort of breakout single needed to propel a band from indie-world overlord to, well, to Wilco.

Since 1995 his work has produced the sort cultish hyper-metaness that has even spawned a drinking game. This self-obsessed, self-involvement can come off as boring to people not in on the reference. Bejar is sometimes the guy a little too into something he just read in The New Yorker. Sure, Bejar’s lyrics have always been wrapped a bit too tight (“Screwed on the chemical floors of the Dance World, now you see why I'll always be a dancer. Plucked by the transcendental brats to the Trance World, but desertscapes on the face of a girl were not the answer...” From The Very Modern Dance off of 2001’s Streethawk: A Seduction”) and here they seem even more wrapped around themselves, but they’re pretty (“In spite of Western Sacrifice, we auction off the sword. But Damascus never asked us to write a song about being bored with Our Lady Of This Immaculate Currency…” from Sick Priest Learns to Last Forever on Destroyer Rubies) Maybe someone should let Bejar know that writing pop lyrics are a bit like wrapping a boxing glove. Wrap too tight and you break the hand. Although I think he knows that and is just being a smartass. He starts the song Watercolours into the Ocean with “Listening to "Strawberry Wine" for the 131st time/it was 1987. It was spring. Now it's 1987 all the time...” These lyrics, and the reference to My Bloody Valentine’s 1897 EP Strawberry Wine are themselves taken from a previous Destroyer song, Song for Acurarela (watercolors), which itself ends with the line “Call me Morbid, call me Pale…” a line taken from a The Smiths song Half a Person, off the B-side compilation The World Won’t Listen, released in 1987. That’s pretty smartass. I’m not saying Destroyer is the Wes Anderson of indie rock, I think Destroyer is smarter than that; more delicate, even if sometimes it is a delicate brick. This level of post-modernism goes back to James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon. I mean it’s that deep (as in depth). You can image you end up pretty drunk playing the Destroyer Drinking Game.

Destroyer can sometimes be hard to get a grip on. Imagine a band as a guide in a forest. With each album or release he takes you further and further into the thicket. You don’t know where he is taking you or what you’ll find when you get there but if you know the guide you may have a sense of what’s coming up around the bend. With Destroyer there’s always the fear that you might fall of the face of a cliff. Most people will only follow with caution.

That’s why makes Destroyer’s Rubies such a great record. To use the forest analogy, it’s the part of the trip when you stop for a rest and you talk about where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. You know you won’t fall off the cliff because you’re not going anywhere. As the name suggests it’s less a proper album and more a collect. It sounds a bit like Streethawk: A Seduction a bit like the two albums since but it’s a really beautiful, and at times, moving pop album.

2 Responses to “DESTROYER'S RUBIES”

Anonymous on 7:42 PM

This absolutely does it for me. I feel guilty for commenting on such a great post shortly after having an in-depth conversation about Laguna Beach and Super Mario Bros 2, but I love, love, love this album. Nicely done.
Anonymous on 5:20 AM

Yeah, now I've been up all night listening to Waterolours in the ocean and I've decided that Bejar's voice and delivery is starting to sound a helluva lot like John Cale on Vintage Violence. To be more specifically the song Amsterdam. Not that this is a bad thing - I think it's a compliment.

Anyway, Super Mario 2 rocks