Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

If I tell you that there’s an album with chilly airy guitars, saxophones, sexy girls chorus, an occasional flout and 80’s light rock vibe and on top of it that it’s good I’m sure that pretty much everyone would look at my like I finally snapped. The worst part that that’s what I’m about to tell you.

There’s a band called Destroyer, known for 60’s inspired songs of indie rock and a notorious influence of Pavement and Bowie, this band has been around since the 90’s and a lot of times has been a one member band fronted by Dan Bejar, also part of The New Pornographers, part of indie super group Swan Lake, collaborator of Bonaparte, and other half of Hello, Blue Roses. This guy is true royalty and has made an album called Kaputt with his band Destroyer…and Kaputt it’s about a very accurate title for the album because is a very calmed explosion that will take over my music year.

Bejar has passed through a lot of genres (Folk, Chamber Pop, Shoegaze, Glam Rock), but Kaputt is kind of a really new twist because it takes things that in time just haven’t been part of the “good music” scene, or the “indie” scene, or the “hipster” scene or really any scene for the last years, adding very kitsch instrumentation but ambitioning a sincerely good effect, of course I’m talking about the distinctive 80’s saxophone light rock, the flout, and the watery guitars sticking to a very classic serious light rock, it seems like saxophone, 80’s and good music could only be together if the intention of the music is going to be “C0heese and Corn”, if not then we have to fear failure, and that’s kind of the fear I have when mixing seriousness with 80’s and saxophones.

Sure, we all can love a little bit of that era, and enjoy it, but it’s sort of something that didn’t necessarily had to come back until Destroyer got this LP out, it’s weird how it touches very well known areas of adult 80’s rock trying to gimmick jazz in the 80’s and still sound fresh, new, calmed and not nostalgic at all, you can’t mistake this LP with a time different than now, because the process of making it sounds like that it can only be possible after the 90’s, if one of the main influences of Destroyer is Pavement, in this LP I swear I hear Sade (or something like that), and I swear I love it.

The songs in here have very strange lyrics, about struggling with freedom and American, also girls, sensuality more than sex and drugs. It starts with Chinatown that really captures the sentiment of the album and all goes building until the middle with the truly amazing song Suicide Demo for Kara Walker and every now and then talks about songs for America until at last it gets to the actual Songs for America song and raps up with Bay of Pigs (kid of political but also kind of disguised).

This is an Album that is not worth reviewing per se, I just recommend it really hard because not one of this nine songs are out of place, and they are calmed and long and patient but also very entertaining, it’s really a quality album.

Tracklist:

1. Chinatown
2. Blue Eyes
3. Savage Night At The Opera
4. Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
5. Poor In Love
6. Kaputt
7. Downtown
8. Song For America
9. Bay Of Pigs

Rate: 9.6/10

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