Canadian indie rockers Destroyer produce songs which are spectacle-laden pop epics, personal piano ballads, and smouldering works of mood that blur the lines between song and novel and cinema, each brimming with the urgency of a state secret in the mind of a tortured spy.
Contradiction informs much of their work, the fog swirling around frontman Dan Bejar illuminated by the friction between competing truths and tastes, as when his interest in jazzy ballads runs aground on bassist John Collins’ interest in bands like Led Zeppelin and Scritti Politti.
Bejar adopts a Rat Pack swagger, inspired by Sammy Davis Jr., with almost delusional glee against a dreamy soundscape of soaring guitars, lush horns, jazz drumming, spaced-out synths, and, perhaps truest to how Bejar sees himself, plinking lounge piano.
