![]() ![]() ![]() Where Thief and City Of Daughters sketched out Bejar’s philosophy over somnambulant piano and padded drums, his fifth record is propelled forward, constantly in momentum. More than any previous Destroyer record, This Night is brilliantly alive. It’s a fitting introduction to an album that takes a leisurely, meandering pace through Bejar’s neuroses, one that could care less about winning over skeptics. ![]() But taken with the rest of the song’s narrative - a failed opera, a decade in Vancouver’s gritty Eastside, tamed wildcats - the lyrics read like an attack on cultural gatekeepers and a weary promise to keep creating art outside of their airtight castle walls. Tear down the borders, stop patrolling the shoresįrom the lips of a Canadian songwriter who fled North America just before the War On Terror, it’s easy to read this as a literal indictment of Bush-era immigration policy. The opening title track hints, as much as any of Bejar’s indecipherable poetry, at the disillusionment born from years of watching indie rock stardom from the outside: But Bejar, never one to make the same album twice, rebounded with loose, jangly arrangements and gauzier vocals for his follow-up. His previous record, 2001’s Streethawk: A Seduction, was praised for its bright guitar melodies. Bejar tasted fame and found it to be bittersweet. This Night, released 20 years ago this Saturday, was a 15-song last call for a certain kind of rock ‘n’ roll purist and a crossroads for Destroyer. ![]() But with indie rock royalties in tow, Bejar felt comfortable absconding to the Iberian Peninsula, stretching out a bit and, in his words, “just doing whatever the fuck I wanted.” He was “following muse,” he later told Spin, and apparently, his muse led him to a sprawling, 70-minute album about a disenchanted evening. Up until that point, Bejar had released contemplative, if verbose, folk-rock as Destroyer. In 2002, Dan Bejar was in his Spain period, hiding out from the pressures of his other band, the New Pornographers, whose 2000 debut Mass Romantic had garnered international acclaim. Neil Young had his crazy Geffen eighties. ![]()
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