DESTROYER
Notorious Lightning and Other Works
Merge
· Dan Bejar rewires past mistakes.
Never short of ideas and awkward genius, Destroyer’s Your Blues was a somewhat clumsy anticlimactic keyboard-driven response to the guitar pandemonium of their earlier conceptual feats This Night and Streethawk: A Seduction. As an album, it sounded unfinished – intentionally left with the spaces and rough edges of home demos in place.
More a stubborn reclamation than admission of defeat, Notorious Lightning and Other Works sees Destroyer return to the studio backed by Victoria's schizo nutters Frog Eyes to take another shot at some of the finest moments of Your Blues. It’s a rare example of "what could have been" actually coming true.
Gone (for the most part or otherwise buried in the chaos) are the old-school keyboards, and back is the ranting, squealing Dan Bejar fronting a batch of crazed musicians he can barely control. Check "New Ways of Living" and you'll feel just as exhausted as I imagine the players in the studio felt. A live-off-the-floor, quick-and-sloppy remake that's tighter, more layered and, frankly, better than the original. Wow – dude's awesome.
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