Dancing with Himself

"I write poetry for myself / I write poetry for myself / I write poetry for myself"

Self-referential, pop-referential, post-modern to the nth degree. Destroyer's latest album, Kaput, is a Depeche Mode album remixed by Blondie, a photocopy of a photocopy of a CBGB poster. It's self-indulgent to a degree that's almost nauseating on first listen, but on reflection, is appropriate for the subject matter. Somehow it works, if you can stomach it.

Dan Bejar seems to be trying to build the ultimate 80's album: disaffected lyrics heavy with apparent poignancy and yet ultimately ephemeral; The words fade as quickly as the manufactured fog at a discotheque. He layers these with synth washes, mindless soft-rock saxophone wails and drum tracks that would sound right at home on the Yamaha keyboard my father brought home in 1986, and the result is an homage which is strangely longing and yet completely honest about the pointlessness of that decade. The effect works best on "Savage Night at the Opera" - the guitar riff could have been lifted right off London Calling - where Bejar seems to be singing directly to the ennui of New York City club scene.

"A savage night at the opera. / Another savage night at the club. / Let's face it, old souls like us are being born to die"

This album is maddening: I hated it from the first time I heard it, but I keep coming back and listening to it anyway. The composition is so carefully and intentionally over the top, and each hook feels like it's a song you already know - you just can't remember where you heard it before. Was that sax solo from a Billy Joel album? The guitar solo on smile: it's Bejar imitating a new wave band that stole it from 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and vocals on the outro are an homage to a ripoff of 'Hey Jude.'

But the album borders on an altar to atheism: glorification of nothingness, of pointlessness. At a certain point I start to think that solipsism may be an indefensible artistic viewpoint. If there is nothing to be known or communicated, why write a song? And why listen to it?

But I still keep listening to it. And maybe that's Bejar's point: no matter how vague and pointless, the music that he pays homage to drew people to the clubs night after night and made them feel something.