Poison Season
Don\'t be put off by sad-voiced crooner Dan Bejar\'s stage name: the only thing this enigmatically evocative Canadian songwriter is guaranteed to destroy is your preconceptions. The erstwhile New Pornographer\'s 11th album makes a sharp right turn following *Kaputt*\'s \'80s-jazz soft-pop. His dramatic fusion of rich, string-driven balladry (\"The River,\" \"Girl in a Sling\") and the saxophone-fueled rock fury of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (\"Times Square,\" \"Midnight Meet the Rain\") transform New York bohemian despair into glorious rock epiphanies.
Dan Bejar’s intellect is so formidable that it feels like an event in itself, and Destroyer has, for 12 years or so, been the most rewarding intellectual project in indie rock. New album Poison Season retains the sumptuous melancholy of 2011's Kaputt, leavening it with the elegant swoon of Nelson Riddle-era Frank Sinatra.
The press materials for Poison Season, the 11th record Dan Bejar has recorded under the name Destroyer, cite David Bowie’s chamber-pop classic Hunky Dory as an influence this time around. The touchstones—ornate strings, piano flourishes—are certainly there, but Poison Season is a looser, less-constrained affair. With…
Dan Bejar has a new palette, and in painting the same subject seems to have found a very different series of interpretations.
The first full-length Destroyer release since 2011's charting Kaputt -- with the Antonio Luque-penned Five Spanish Songs EP, and his bands the New Pornographers and Hello, Blue Roses' Brill Bruisers and WZO, respectively, dropping in the interim -- 2015's Poison Season marks prolific songsmith Dan Bejar's tenth LP with the project, and it's an intensely wistful, strings- and horns-washed epic exploration of New York city life.
How do you follow a masterpiece? You go ahead and make another one. That’s been Dan Bejar’s tactic anyway
Destroyer is typically viewed as a glorified solo vehicle, with singer-songwriter Dan Bejar joined by a rotating cast of backing players. At...
Listeners never know what a new Destroyer album will sound like. Much of that is by design, of course-mastermind Dan Bejar is known to try to totally revamp the act's sound with each record.
Dan Bejar doesn't want you to like his new record. He'd appreciate it, but it's not necessary. To him, the success he enjoyed with his last
Review of 'Poison Season' the forthcoming release by Destroyer, comes out on August 28th via Merge/Dead Oceans. The single "Times Square is now streaming.
Dan Bejar found unexpected late-career success with 2011’s Kaputt, and seems uncomfortable with the high expectations for its followup – but it turns out to be another triumph