Destroyer at the High Noon Saloon
Ted Bois
Dan Bejar of Destroyer did not have fountains Monday.
If you’ve seen Dan Bejar perform with The New Pornographers, you know he’s not traditional front-man material. He prefers to hang out by the edge of the stage and drink. But Monday night at the High Noon Saloon, he was needed front and center to lead his band Destroyer through the fog.
Like the human epitome of laundry day, a scruffy Bejar sleepily stood fast and stoic as a tremendous orchestra surrounded him and washed the air with songs mostly pulled from this year’s smooth jazz surprise, Kaputt. Piercing the clouds with lots of saxophone blasts and mutant trumpet, Destroyer solidly recreated the soothing sounds of “Suicide Demo For Kara Walker” and “Chinatown,” as Bejar’s nasally croon was balanced out by well-placed backing vocals from Larissa Loyva.
Considering the manic rock treatment Bejar gave his midi experiments on 2004’s Your Blues and on the Frog Eyes collaborative EP, Notorious Lightning And Other Works, it was compelling to think of gems from his extensive back catalog getting the Kaputt treatment. But with the exception of a sexed-up take on “It’s Gonna Take An Airplane,” the non-Kaputt tracks Destroyer belted out—like the ramshackle “3000 Flowers”—mostly just gained blasts of propulsion from Joseph Shabason’s sax. Still, they slotted in seamlessly next to glossy cuts like “Downtown” and “Song For America,” and held the audience’s unflinching attention even when Bejar looked at his most lost, wandering the stage and (apparently) reading lyrics off a piece of paper.
But it’s hard to really blame him for needing a little help with his wondrously dense songwriting, which was never better illustrated than by the heart-stopping encore “Bay Of Pigs,” his epic ambient disco narrative. “Listen, / I’ve been drinking,” Bejar breathed into the mic, and by that time, we were all feeling calm, warm, and woozy right along with him.
It took a while for the crowd to scale down from the rambling peaks opener The War On Drugs though. Coming on like a shoegaze Allman Brothers, the shaggy Philadelphia band—which formerly featured Kurt Vile—shimmied and shook through “Baby Missiles” off last year’s Future Weather EP as Adam Granduciel absolutely shredded and channeled the voice of Dylan. The band’s lush set appropriately set the tone for what would be a musically decadent night.
