ARTS & CULTURE
Monday, October 13, 2015 13
A Concert Review: Destroyer
Live at the Danforth Music Hall, 30 September 2015
justin philpott › staff writer
O
n 24 August, Destroyer released Poison
Season on Merge Records, a modest four
and a half years after the release of Kaputt.
With a jammed-packed schedule of dates
all across North America, Destroyer’s tour in support
of the album looks gruelling,. The band stopped into
Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on September 30th
and I was lucky enough to be in attendence.
Destroyer is Dan Bajer. Dan Bajer is Destroyer.
Bajer has been releasing music as Destroyer for almost
20 years. The only constant over those twenty
years has been his voice. A seemingly infinite
number of musicians have played with Bajer
on Destroyer albums. He goes out of his way to
defy classification, ensuring that each album
is distinct from anything he has ever released
before. Even with all this change, picking out
a Destoyer song, wherever it is played, whatever
album it is on, is easy. Bajer’s voice is too identifiable. And that is a by no means a bad thing. Bajer has
a unique way of delivering his lyrics: sharp, quick,
and insightful bursts. The words are articulted so well
that at times it is as if he is speaking and not singing.
Bajer acknowledges having had a strong affinity for
how Lou Reed used to deliver his lyrics.
Although Destroyer has no shortage of outstading
records, its listenership reached a new peak after the
release of Kaputt in early 2011. Kaputt was a staple
on Top 10 lists on all the major music publication’s
year end reviews. What did Destroyer do to follow
up the success of Kaputt? They released an EP called
Five Spanish Songs, which is exactly what you would
think it is: five spanish songs. The EP was brilliant
and beautiful, but releasing a foreign language EP to
follow up a massively successful album is a move only
Dan Bajer could imagine. In a press release before the
EP’s release, Bajer wrote: “It was 2013. The English
language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable. It felt over for English; good for business trans-
“My ears [...] were treated
to sheer musical bliss for
90 minutes.”
actions, but that’s about it. The only other language I
know is Spanish…” It is blatently obvious that Bajer is
not concerned with his number of fans. It is refreshing to see an artist be themselves and have no concern
for the expectations of fans and critics.
Destroyer walked on stage with 9 musicians,
including Bajer. After a quick welcome wave, the
band jumped right into “Bangkok”, a song off the
new album. It was slow and seductive to start until
it finally exploded into an ocean of sound with every
ê Destroyer performing “European Oils” at the Danforth Music Hall. Photo credit: Justin Philpott
musician contributing. It was a perfect opener. For
the slowburner “Girl in a Sling” a 10th musician,
Bajer’s sister, came on stage to add violin. Nine musicians wouldn’t cut it.
My ears, along with the ears of everyone else at
the Danforth, were treated to sheer musical bliss
for 90 minutes. The instrumentation on each song
was lavish to the point where you wished you could
hop on the groove and go for a ride. When the trumpet and saxophone got into full swing a good song
instantaneously became a great song. The setlist
was comprised largely of songs from Poison Season
and Kaputt. When playing “Poor in Love”, off
Kaputt, Bajer looked at the audience while pulling at his hair and sang “I was poor in love / I
was poor in wealth / I was ok in everything
else there was”. In turning a phrase, Bajer is
a genuis; no other artist can say as much by
saying so little. My favourite Bajer lyric is on
“Savage Night at the Opera” where he sings “It’s not a
war until someone loses an eye.” There is just something oddly amusing about that line. I was absolutely
delighted when the band began playing “European
Oils” from Destroyer’s Rubies released in 2006. This
was the first Destroyer song I ever heard so it was very
» see Concert review, page 18