ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 25TH 2011
1YRON’S TOP 52 RECORDS OF 2011 RANKING: #2


Most records worth listening to have to fight their way into people’s lives, they must somehow fit into a pre-existing musical groove that continues to fluctuate and ultimately expand over time. Kaputt is different because it has created a space all its own, and people have responded to that cavernous expanse with unanimous praise. It is the kind of record which relies so much on the recent past but essentially sculpts an entirely unique position for both itself and Destroyer. I won’t pretend to know too much about Destroyer pre-Kaputt, or how frontman Dan Bejar managed to arrive at such a magnificent record. From my research, Kaputt is entirely unlike anything from Destroyer’s nearly two-decade long foray into cross-genre experimentation and overtly didactic lyrical prose. I’m reminded of the career trajectory of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and how Before Today became a major breakthrough. Like Before Today, Kaputt exhaustively mines certain genres now that enough time has passed for such actions to be deemed acceptable. Before Today entered the space in which its influences created and paraded around without so much as a care in the world. It is a record very much invested in the ‘now’ of its past whereas Kaputt merely outlines those influences, evoking what feels like the ghosts of early to mid-80’s bands such as Talk Talk, Depeche Mode, New Order and perhaps most clearly, Avalon-era Roxy Music.


In some sense, Kaputt’s bold exploration of its past makes it difficult to evaluate when it sounds utterly unlike anything anyone is making at present. As a result, not even Destroyer’s Rubies or Trouble In Dreams (more straightforward rock-orientated records), can align themselves with Kaputt’s earthy bass, its constantly rebounding saxophones or its washy synths. It makes sense, then, that Kaputt is Destroyer at its most accessible and glossy, the vocal melodies their catchiest and Bejar’s lyrics - whilst still decidedly abundant and illogical, at least in the literary sense - curiously life-affirming. It’s the music that first draws you in before the lyrics, but over time it’s clear that the two are so reliant on one another, and this dynamic is what results in Kaputt’s constant flow. Nothing is jarring through the nine tracks here, evident in a song such as Savage Night At The Opera with its ripped, propulsive bass and metronomic drum beat which drives as smooth as the motorbike in its accompanying video. This bleeds into Suicide Demo For Kara Walker, a duet with the artist of the song’s namesake about social identity and racial segregation in America. Following an extended piano intro, which turns into a lonely flute solo, Bejar settles into a remarkable groove that builds over eight minutes. His vocals are more of a drawl, a ramble of words and phrases, repeated and embellished with billowing horns. The song’s origins stem from a text piece initiated by Walker and supplied to Bejar, only to be cut up, rearranged and presented in its current state. Bejar has always connected his words with his music and it’s interesting to see how an outside influence controls the words, which then inform Bejar’s arrangement. The two feel constantly linked here, one responding to the other’s need to reach out, before cascading into a trench of disorder as the song climaxes and fades.


Suicide Demo For Kara Walker shares a lot in common with the album’s title track, another example of the record’s sprawling instrumentation, this time a distant take on the heady glamour of the rock star lifestyle. The rambling prose is present, with “Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME, all sounds like a dream to me” turning into something of a mantra. The horns of Suicide Demo are replaced by dizzying trumpets that percolate the pounding drum beat, grounding Kaputt firmly within its Steely Dan-esque locale. Downtown and Song For America are more downbeat and rope in soul singer Sibel Thrasher whose presence is just as considerable as Bejar’s. They’re shorter pieces which don’t quite scale the heights of some of the longer tracks on Kaputt, but again, here we find the vocals informing the music through repeated phrases which become key to Kaputt’s familiarity. The latter’s “Winter, spring, summer and fall, animals crawl, towards death’s embrace” becomes urgent with each repeat, almost anthemic, as trumpets screech and try to break free in the background, before finally escaping in an outro that fades too soon. Whether that’s intentional will remain a mystery. There’s a similar moment on Poor In Love, where a guitar solo pours forth between the lines “Why’s everybody sing along when we built this city on ruins?” It’s one of the most memorable moments of the whole record. Thrasher shows up on Blue Eyes and Chinatown, the album’s opening track and lead single, which represents the “commercial” slant of Kaputt and is about as inviting as Destroyer are likely to get. Chinatown is important because it opens the album in a relatively washed out mood. The song feels soaked, almost drowning in its fluid, scattered arrangement. The following eight tracks just dive further beneath Kaputt’s elusive surface.


Bejar’s vocals are hushed and languid throughout Kaputt, and this is obviously a conscious decision to mirror its smooth sax and noir lite jazz, but it also marks a contrast between the lyrics. Many of them were written whilst lying down on a couch or making a sandwich, suggesting that the beguile of Bejar’s narratives are not so cryptic after all, or, that indeed, the meaning of the words just aren’t important. As previously mentioned, the focus is always on the music first and how the words, should they ascribe any meaning or cause for interpretation, are measured by the character of a squiggly saxophone, or a lonesome woodwind section. Bay Of Pigs (Detail) is a marginally shorter version of the original that first appeared on the Bay Of Pigs EP in 2009 and its inclusion here feels fundamental, providing the first taste of Destroyer’s foray into the ambient disco market. Listening to Kaputt on a loop, or with Bay Of Pigs (Detail) first as opposed to last, one can begin to understand how Kaputt as a whole was conceived. All of its glamour and its embellishments, its beautiful orchestral flourishes and its smooth sheen stem from this deliciously extravagant song. As before, the music has more to say than the words, and in listening to such detailed and realised compositions, an understanding between Kaputt and its listener will likely be identified. It’s a bond that should prove unshakable and increase in significance over the years, for Kaputt, despite its apparent influences, is a record quite unlike anything that came before it.