One record about which I blanked while straining to come up with my “Top” list for 2006 is Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies. This is a record by Dan Bejar, who essentially comprises the entire band, and moonlights with the New Pornographers. I don’t think I’ve ever loved and hated a record so much, and I mean in a more real sense than what saying I have a “love-hate relationship” with it would suggest. I love it and hate it at exactly the same time. The lyrics, dense with references, are so damned cloying; he definitely has claimed a place in the “I’m So Clever” school of lyricists. Consider:
Those who love Zeppelin will eventually betray Floyd,
I cast off those couplets in honor of the void.
So of course, you find yourself trying to catch all of the references; indeed a lot of the problem here is that what’s bad about it is also what’s good about it. Actually, as I listen now, it kind of reminds me of the once revolutionary rapping style of Rakim. And as I listen now, a half second later, it reminds me of Robin Hitchcock, and I can’t really stand any Robin Hitchcock besides a couple of Soft Boys songs, esp. “I Wanna Destroy You.” I do love the crisp, dry production; the guitar sound is so clean and immediate. But. . . well, you get the picture.
Bejar reminds me of this certain type of friend who’s so f-ing brilliant and voluble and unable to control it that s/he's great to be around but if you ever have to, say, spend two hours in a car with him (or her), you want to kill her (or him).
Now I need to go watch some TV before I die of TV deprivation.
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4 comments:
Destroyer is a tough one for me as well, particularly since the New Pornos' Dan Bejar songs are some of my favorites -- in fact, "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" is my top song of 2006. But it's tough to get past that voice. I do very much like
"Painter in Your Pocket" and don't mind "European Oils" . . . and am working on the rest. Maybe I just need time.
Oh, and Major, you don't have even a small soft spot for "Balloon Man" or "Madonna of the Wasps"?
Your reach extends much deeper into his oeuvre, m. I'm listening to "European Oils" as I write. Yeah, it's got something softly grandiose about it that I like. I find I like piano more and more in my dotage.
Incidentally, I'm very impressed with your proficiency with html.
Is cloying really the right term for what he does with references? I sometimes think that the use he's making with the historical world is not meant to be part of a guessing game; or, if it is, it's not one of those fake guessing games of references one finds in, say, Fountains of Wayne, where the references are meant to be both "clever" and completely accessible to everyone, as if the lyrics had been focused-grouped on every college campus. But what would I know: I tired of Fountains of Wayne so quickly after the first play or two of that album with the hits on it that I am not a reliable source.
But, for example, these lines from "The Sublimation Hour," on the Streethawk album:
Medium Rotation, the Shock of the New, and a memo from Feldman saying, "everything is true"
- who's "Feldman"? One feels like one should know; and, at the same time, it doesn't matter whether "Feldman" actually has a referent. Look at how poorly these hardcore Destroyer fans do tracking down references: http://www.deftone.com/destroyer/index.php?title=Main_Page. A la Fredric Jameson, about one aspect or another of postmodernity: nothing matters, and it doesn’t seem to matter that nothing matters: couldn’t one say that these sort-of references are a joke about the importance of subcultural cachet, like in Bejar's jibes at the “American underground” (in “Rubies” and throughout his lyrics)?
The imdb entry for Marty Feldman includes this as one of his "personal quotes":
"I do not disbelieve in anything. I start from the premise that everything is true until proved false. Everything is possible."
I had expected the referent to be Morton Feldman!
I think you're right: "cloying " would be an adjective to describe a band I'd never listen to again, and I will clearly listen to bejar again.
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