What has pulled me into the orbit of Destroyer time and again is that voice, the keening timbre of that sometime New Pornographer Dan Bejar, bard of beers and slinger of songs, offering up missives from the misanthropic yet again. Except now it’s less David Bowie and Robin Hitchcock filtered through indie haze, and more Al Stewart circa “Time Passages” and Avalon-era Roxy Music and other early ‘80s touchstones, replete with swirling saxophones and languid grooves.
Given that veneer, it’s hard to see how Kaputt made it past the hipster radar unshelled and free of attack, with the tailored arrangements evincing a smooth MOR sheen more often than not. Then again, the long tail of time v. criticism is a slow focus that keeps the image gauzy and opaque until, by sheer luck and endurance, center stage clarity slips into view. So maybe this type of music, made by a Bizarro blend of Christopher Cross and Syd Barrett, has whipped back around into favor, albeit of a self-aware tint in this 21st Century iteration. I only know that I played it and played it, charms eliding past flaws, until it became both a modern piece and contemporary to the past, of an era and up-to-the-moment, no irony required or needed.
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