Destroyer – Kaputt

Dan Bejar started Destroyer as a solo home-recording experiment in the early to mid 90s. Working alone, and at his own pace, Bejar dabbled in four tracking and worked to develop his style and vision.

He was meticulous in reworking songs again and again until he found confidence in his music and his voice. By 1996 he had culled enough material to release his debut full length, We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge. Stripped down lo-fielectric folk, Golden Bridge introduced Dan as a major new talent in Vancouver.

In 1998 Bejar added a rhythm section to Destroyer and headed into a real studio for the first time to record City Of Daughters, a sparsely produced but engagingly vibrant batch of songs in which Bejar’s unique and inventive lyrics began to evolve into an obtuse and poetically original voice.

Destroyer expanded once again in early 2000, this time rounding out into a quintet for Thief, the third album, which provided an expanded canvas for Bejar’s cryptic and scathing indictments that warned of the pitfalls and pratfalls of the modern music industry (or at least that’s what everyone claimed he was singing about; Dan offered no explanations).

By the time Streethawk: A Seduction hit the streets in 2001, the groundwork had been laid and a maelstrom of critical acclaim flowed all around. Streethawk was a highly refined and biting condemnation, a harsh satire of popular culture, an idea and conception honed to razor sharp perfection.

Destroyer - Kaputt from Merge Records on Vimeo.