Gig: Destroyer

Destroyer (The War on Drugs / Mantler)

Lee's Palace. Thursday, March 31, 2011.

Mantler was a savvy choice for an early opener at this show, dovetailing nicely with the headliner's smooth and mellow new direction. Chris Cummings has been doing that for awhile, and here the trio was playing to a relatively thin crowd, but probably one with a lot of people who hadn't been exposed to Mantler's superbly-composed lounge-pop before.

On a stage crammed with gear, Cummings' Wurlizer and Jay Anderson's drums were squeezed right up near the front of the stage. Along with Matt McLaren's bass, the band produced a snappy funk from the low-key leadoff of "Playin' Along". "I Guarantee You a Good Time" won over some of the crowd and as the place filled in, the band held their own in terms of amount of attention being paid to them — which is always a victory for the first band up playing to people here for someone else. And Cummings elicited some cheers as he stood up to rap out a verse on closer "I've Been Destroyed". After the set, I overheard one guy approvingly describing the set to a late-arriving friend as "kinda like Bacharach", so it seems that the tuxedo-clad singer managed to make something of an impact.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Playing songs from their then-pending Slave Ambient album, Philadelphia's The War on Drugs were, at the time of this show, still mostly talked about as being the band Kurt Vile used to be in. That album would go on to make something of a splash, and put the band on an upward trajectory to a point where they're now generally being considered on their own merits. But still, I guess the seeds had been planted, as there was a fairly-full house for the quartet.

A balky microphone rendered Adam Granduciel's vox in opener "Best Night" staticky and incomprehensible, but his guitar work was pretty tasty. I dunno if it was that bad mic or something else, but he seemed to be in a testy mood at the outset: "Can you put some fuckin' sauce on it?" he desperately sneered at song's end — which, as "Baby Missiles" started, apparently meant some massive reverb. He'd repeat the call a couple more times in the set, to the extent that a few guys in the crowd were soon also calling for more sauce on it.

Underneath the sauce, his vocal delivery registered as sub Dylan-y, a flavour which was imparted even more strongly in "Buenos Aires Beach", with a folk-rock 12-string-style guitar part. So there were some tensions here between the band's retro-y fundamentals and the more contemporary tweaks. For the latter, besides that fashionable reverb, there was a tidy regularity to the rhythm section — drummer Steven Urgo was holding things together with a laptop and click-track. That imparted a sleekness, that when set against the Americana-ish vibe of the vocals, seemed to be the band's most distinguishing feature — as if they were trying to find a synthesis between a stack of Tom Petty albums and another of Thrill Jockey discs.

The mellow "Brothers" did bring their old bandmate to mind, sounding like it could nestle quite nicely on a mixtape next to Kurt Vile's "Jesus Fever". But even better was "Coming Through", where the guitar tone channelled Lindsay Buckingham and the steady rhythm channelled nothing so much as Fleetwood Mac in a concise three minutes, a more intriguing package than closer (and older track) "Arms Like Boulders" which stretched out more and leaned a bit more on the Dylanisms.

It was a forty-minute, eight-song set from the band, a lot of them in the five-minute range, in that zone between popsong concision and jammy looseness. And as the set progressed, Granduciel's mood improved — a few songs in he was fixated on the notion that the hometown crowd might, at any time, start a chant for Destroyer's saxophone player Joseph Shabason.

Listen to a track for this set here.

Shabason's "You Belong to the City"-esque sax licks would indeed be central to Destroyer's new sound on Kaputt. On stage, that was reproduced alongside trumpet player J.P. Carter (Fond Of Tigers, Inhabitants). The 80's-inspired smoothness was the album's big talking point, but somewhat unsurprisingly, in the live setting it all sounded like, well, Destroyer, with the new stuff getting scuffed up a bit and the older songs getting some smoothed-out treatments. But there's no doubt that soft-rock vibe was palpable right from the start with album-opening track "Chinatown".

Before the show, I was having a beer with J., and mentioned how it'd be interesting to finally see Destroyer play, upon which he swiftly reminded me that we had, in fact 'em, back in 2008. On being told, the memories of that show flashed back into my consciousness, mostly about the quote-unquote eccentric behaviour of leader/vocalist Dan Bejar. That persona was on display here, as the band launched into "Blue Eyes", with Bejar stopping the song after its first line. He was peering back to the soundman, thinking he was being signalled, though it turned out to be a false alarm: "I'm hallucinating," Bejar muttered, one of the few verbal asides he'd offer. On the whole, Bejar — who wasn't wielding a guitar this time around — came off as more closed off and inward-directed than previously, though still to some degree like he was playing a character.

Instead of wild-eyed rock prophet, though, his mode here was closed-eye visionary, delicately gripping the microphone as he sang. Like his multi-layered lyrics, it's hard to know whether to take his presence at face value — while on stage, is he self-consciously playing the role of anguished artist? Does he maybe really feel that way a bit, but then plays it up for gravitas? I don't assume to say, but there were times that he looked acutely uncomfortable. On the other hand, he also showed a sharp awareness of his surroundings: as "Painter in Your Pocket" was getting started, Shabason was struggling with a beer bottle when Bejar non-nonchalantly reached in his pocket and handed him an opener.

Behind the frontman was a seven-piece band, giving full-force to the new material's lush arrangements. It admirably rendered the Kaputt material with the same smooth hammer deployed on the album and applied the same treatment to the older stuff in the setlist. "It's Gonna Take an Airplane" (from 2004's Your Blues) was considerably bulked up from the original's acoustic guitar/flute mellowness, there was an excellent version of "My Favorite Year" and a spatter-y "3000 Flowers" that melded a rocking edge with the sax line.

Of the new songs, "Downtown" was notable for featuring dual bass action. "Suicide Demo for Kara Walker" featured the same extended intro as the album version, the song stretching past the eleven-minute mark but never feeling too prolonged. The main set closed with the weird disco-isms of "Song for America", and a slowly decaying synth pattern kept playing as the audience called for an encore. Returning to the stage Bejar commented, "as always, you're too kind," about his most protracted direct communication to the crowd.

The encore would only turn out to be one song, but that would be the expansive "Bay of Pigs". Clutching a handful of lyric sheets, Bejar returned to the stage accompanied only by a guitarist and keyboard player Larissa Loyva (whose backing vox throughout the night were a key element of the band's sound) though eventually the rest of the band would filter back to join in as the song slowly ramped up from floating textures to mutant pop. There was an enjoyable crack in the façade when, mid-song, the musicians nearly broke each other up, the "da-da-dums" punctuated by Bejar's half-cut-off laughs. Even if this was a less-forceful show than when I'd seen them before, it was more insistent on my memory, and I reckon that this time I won't forget that I saw Destroyer play.

You can check out something from the latest album here, or listen to an older track get the Kaputt treatment here.