(pair of mirrors)

Destoyer – “Blue Eyes” 

Kaputt 

Cryptic, weird, and awesome. 

“Chinatown”. “Savage Night at the Opera”. “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”. 

Who’s Kara Walker you say? You’ll probably never understand. I’ll probably never understand, but who cares. Who cares when you’ve got – “Downtown”. 

There’s many things I like about Destroyer’s latest, Kaputt. But what I like the most is how, in this increasingly frame-less world, Kaputt nevertheless manages to lie outside any remaining frames of mind. 

It’s not that Kaputt is controversial. Hardly. Neither is it particularly challenging, different, or complex. The album is so effortless that, without some extrinsic effort on the listener’s behalf, it will simply sail by unnoticed. Kaputt has zero gravity. But once it’s got you in its orbit, it’s not letting you go. 

First of all, Kaputt sounds like an album by someone you already know. And that’s because you sort of do, as most of Destroyer comprises half of The New Pornographers (namely: Johns Collins and Dan Bejar). But while The New Pornographers are all rhythm and dance, Destroyer takes a much more mellow, thought provoking, and sometimes straight-up nonsensical, approach. 

The spirit of the album is best illustrated by some of the lyrics that Kaputt comes up with. For instance, seen you consort with your invisible man follows enter through the exit, and exit through the entrance in the second track, “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”. Another good one is “Poor In Love” – You were born okay/Rich in name alone/ Your Jesuit profile will suit the coming Apocalypse.  The rest of the album follows in kind. 

But above all this compounding nonsensicness, prolific glimpses of profound lyricism, even poetry, emerge in Kaputt. It is at the intersection of comedy, self-loathing, and depth that many musicians have found their stride (see: James Murphy, Win Butler, Regina Spector), and it is at this intersection that, every once in a while, Kaputt turns into magic: 

You terrify the land, 

You are pestle and mortar, 

First love’s new order: 

Mother Nature’s son. 

King of the Everglades, 

Population: 1. 

I write poetry for myself.

I write poetry for myself. 

(“Blue Eyes”) 

-L