Why can't you see that a life in art and a life of mimicry - it's the same thing!?!

intertextuality

I'll try to not let this devolve into another college paper about Destroyer but I have to talk about his new rekkid which was just released yesterday. (Even though it's newly [legally] released, I feel like I'm one of the last to talk about it.) For me, Dan Bejar's "band" always invokes memories of the west coast; of times when Your Blues was ringing out in the apartments of some of my friends and memories of trips to Zulu on saturday afternoons. I used to sometimes see Bejar out doing normal things such as renting videos, having a coffee with friends, walking out and about, etc. The Destroyer-Frog Eyes EP was the soundtrack to early 2005 for me, as I agonized about a number of items both personal and academic.

I mention this because a number of the reviews I have read have dealt with Destroyer on a purely academic level whether doing close readings of his poetics and/or attempting to place Bejar in some PoMo/Modernist continuum of aesthetics. One review even went out of its way to say that Destroyer is soulless. Underlying these reviews (whether taking on Bejar in an academic manner or giving him 2 stars for his lack of soul) is a sense that the scholastics and academics of Bejar cannot be appreciated on a more affective level. Rubies is far from without soul; Bejar shares with us, however meta or knowing, the jewels (ew, pun) of his mind and heart. His poetry, his lyrics, are as heart wrenching if not more than any emo dude ever came up with. When he sings "Typical me, typical me," we hear a certain frustration and, at the same time, amusement at himself. Bejar's ambivalence is fundamentally human.

I am not saying however that Bejar is not operating on a "higher" (that is, aesthetically, intellectually) level but some people seem to conflate his intertextuality with a purely scholastic approach. Bejar borrows, quotes from himself and others; his knowledge base is wide. The cover of the rekkid, for example, features his (?) bookshelf. This is not accidental and he seems to be inviting us to track down every allusion, every intertextual gesture and every nuance of his lyrics. (Also, he seems to be teasing us fans by giving us a shot of his books but without the, as it were, inventory. I for one would love to see what titles he actually has up there; perhaps some Pynchon, DeLillo, Pound, Eliot, maybe even a Donald Barthelme tucked in there beside Ellison??? Is "Destroyer" actually an allusion to Invisible Man's Ras the Destroyer? And so on and so forth.)

There is a problem here. The emotional component of Destroyer (however knowing, winking, ironic) gets short circuited by his poetics which instead of inviting one to think about Bejar himself, lead us to read his lyrics closely without actually, you know, reading them. This disconnect seems to point to a couple options, either that (a) Bejar is playing a joke on all of us or (b) Bejar is really as meta as some take him to be. Of course, it's probably some combination of the two but is Bejar laughing with or at his fans and critics? Again, I think Bejar is almost too subtle for his own good. There is also a part of me that thinks that he just writes some pretty good lyrics and melodies and is a sort of twisted but awesome pop-smith and he can appreicated as well just on this level than on any other.

But, really, is Bejar really all that special? I mean, I love his music and I think Rubies is his best rekkid yet but I think we have to question if what he is doing with his intertextuality really all that singular or intelligent? I think a lot of rappers are just as intertextual if not more than Bejar in their constant allusions to themselves, their last albums, their songs, their lyrics, their heroes, other emcee's lines and all sorts of other things. I once read someone call Rakim's style "metarapping" but almost all rap in some way is meta, especially when one factors in the place and prominence of sampling (both instrumental, vocal and lyrical) in the music. There are layers on top of layers in the simplest rap tracks. (Just try the Destroyer drinking game when listening to Jay-Z and watch yourself get pissed as a newt by the third track of any album.) Bejar though is much more intertextual (and knowingly so) than most other rock and, most importantly, he does the intertextual thing well.

There is a disconnect in Destroyer's Rubies though between the instrumental and the lyrical. While the lyrical is, as established, quite allusive, the music that backs it is almost straight and even conservative rock. If Bejar was everything that we might say he is, it would have made more sense for him to continue along the Your Blues path even further, perhaps adding an mpc3000 to his MIDI synths. The turn back towards the regular rock band though was precipitated by the Notorious Lightning EP which featured Frog Eyes (hardly a conservative rock band but they have the same sort of set-up as one) as his backing band. In some ways, the disconnect actually helps the intertextuality of the lyrics shine through clearer; Bejar sacrifices a more adventurous instrumental backing for his words.

I have to say here that Bejar is a great singer (fuck the haters) but not, of course, in the American Idol way. He has such a singular manner of enunicating his words; he, in other words, to jack/push further something that Carl Wilson said, has great flow. In hip-hop a lot of the time, it is not what you say but how you say it. Just check out this ridiculous random Cam'ron verse:

With the Goonies I spa, stay in tune with ma
She like "Damn, this the realest since Kumbaya"
Umbayay, Killa Cam my Lord
Still the man with the pan, Skrilla fam on board
Now bitches they wanna neuter me
Niggas they wanna tutor me
The hooligan in hoola-hands, manouverin's nothin' new to me
Doggie, I'm from the land of grime
Pan pan, gram of dime
Not toes or MC, when I say "Hammer Time"
Beef, I hammer mine, when I get my hands on nines
If I have on Bammerline, cordouroys, camera shine
Canary burgundy, I call it lemon red
Yellow diamonds in my ear, call 'em lemon heads
Lemon head, end up dead
Ice like Winnipeg
Gemstone, Flintstones, you could say I'm friends with Fred
You want happy Scrappy?
I got Pataki at me
Bitches say I'm tacky daddy
Range look like Laffy Taffy

Cam's just as intertextual but his allusive base is somewhat "lower" than Dan's. Killa Cam's verse is basically nonsense but, in the context of the song and in the way that he raps it, it sounds dope. Sometimes I wonder if Dan Bejar is the same way. That is, do we pay attention more to his lyrics because of his delivery and not in their poetics? I don't really have a definitive answer.



I don't know if it came through in this little discussion, but I really really like Destroyer's Rubies and would urge anyone to go out and buy it. I'm really looking forward to his show when he opens (what the fuck?) for Magnolia Electric Co. on March 25th at Lee's Palace. Hopefully, he'll play a headliner length set.

Also: I'm going to see Common play tonight and Animal Collective tomorrow. Should be fun. I've also just learnt that in addition to DJing on the 10th and playing a CMW show at the same time as the DEF JUX showcase, Cadence Weapon is opening for Hot Chip on the 15th. I might just go now. More later.

Listening to: Destroyer - Rubies