Band of the Week: Destroyer

Hometown: Vancouver, British Columbia
Fun Fact: Besides fronting Destroyer, Dan Bejar is currently in three other bands—Hello, Blue Roses; Swan Lake and the New Pornographers.
Why It's Worth Watching: A Destroyer album is like a library book for the ears—listeners can get happily lost in Bejar's guitar-based, slithery melodies and labyrinthine lyrics.
For Fans Of: Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Gustave Flaubert

If, instead of being a band from Vancouver, Destroyer was a carbon-copy of our planet's solar system, Dan Bejar would be the sun. He would also be the earth, the whales, the grains of sand and the ocean. Sailing atop that ocean there'd be a yacht, and as it glides across a glassy faux Mediterranean, the aboveboard sound system would blast the heady, wordy, oddly beautiful sounds that stem from Destroyer's captain—also Bejar, of course.

Bejar's work as one of the gaggle of talented musicians in the New Pornographers (he's responsible for the stellar "Myriad Harbor," from last year's Challengers, amongst other songs) may be more familiar, but he's birthed albums for over a decade under the Destroyer moniker—home-recorded, solo works at first, full-band efforts later. The recently released Trouble In Dreams is the 10th Destroyer LP, and, much like the rest of Bejar's oeuvre, it's trailing fervently divided reactions in its wake.

"I think people were upset and confused by the positive ink spilled about [the 2006 Destroyer album] Rubies," Bejar said in an e-mail interview with Paste. "People who like Destroyer seem to be really really into it, and the people who don't are generally a little dumbfounded as to how anyone could get excited about it, let alone stand it. It's really specific music, while most well-regarded music is really general."

The New Pornographers—who licensed the A.C. Newman-penned song “The Bleeding Heart Show” to the University of Phoenix for the school’s omnipresent commercials—aren’t opposed to the paycheck and widespread exposure that come with the sale of a tune. Bejar, who’s more likely to be recognized at a music blogger convention than on any given college campus, offered a candid appraisal of musicians connecting with audiences through this and other nontraditional means in the music industry’s current transitional phase.

“I couldn't feel more removed from the social maneuverings of the music world, whether it be the Internet or rock clubs or whatever,” Bejar said. “Destroyer music repels commercials. We've never been asked for a song, because the sound of rejecting commercials is written into the very fabric of my voice, words.”

The deepest joy of listening to Destroyer is the specificity of the band’s dense alternate universe, one where concentration and repeat spins offer rewards beyond a mere chuckle or brief titillation.

“I think Destroyer music courts an emotional reaction just like all music tries to at some point,” Bejar said. “I mean every word I say way more than everything everybody else is always saying, I swear.”

The production on the studio-recorded Destroyer albums shoves Bejar’s strange, mesmerizing voice directly to the front of the mix, making his hyperliterate lyrics both a cinch (to hear) and a challenge (to interpret). Just in case anyone gets hung up trying to decide whether he’s saying “bullshit” or “rural shit,” Bejar includes song transcripts with the majority of his Destroyer works.

“I know Pere Ubu's against it, but I like them,” Bejar said. “Lyric sheets, that is. And Pere Ubu. It might go back to really wanting to know EXACTLY what Mark E. Smith was saying. A lyric sheet can also be really harmful, like in the case of the copious shit writings of the Rolling Stones, which is a drag cause everything else is so cool about the Stones.”

To read Paste's full interview with Bejar, click here.