A Change Is Coming: Destroyer

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

WHEN DAN BEJAR formed Destroyer in 1995, he was making his first recordings alone in his Vancouver bedroom and releasing his folksy lo-fi music on a tiny local label.

Thirteen years later, he is an indie-rock mainstay, not only with Destroyer but also with his cabal of side projects, such as Swan Lake, Hello Blue Roses and, of course, the Vancouver/Seattle super-populated supergroup The New Pornographers.

Each project reveals a different side of Bejar's musical personality, but none so much as Destroyer, which has expanded into a full band and has just released its eighth album, "Trouble in Dreams." It's a decisive move away from the more pared-down sound of his previous album, "Rubies," thanks in part to new drummer Fisher Rose.

"If you play in a rock band," says Bejar, "you know how things will run different courses when you have two drummers and they're completely different. It's like having different lyrics or different singers."

Nevertheless, Destroyer is in constant flux, revealing its mastermind's musically omnivorous nature.

After signing with the venerable indie label Merge Records and releasing the highly praised "This Night" in 2002, he traded the traditional rock-band format for a wall of synthesizers for 2004's "Your Blues," creating a sort of twisted easy-listening vibe. It was a one-album feint: Two years later, "Rubies" returned to his sharp, rock-based sound.

"We didn't record 'Rubies' live off the floor," he says, "but it at least sounds like a record I might be able to lie about and say that we did. But with 'Trouble in Dreams,' that's not even an option. I wanted the music to be louder, more ferocious, and at the same time dreamier."

Rather, Destroyer, like his other projects, is an outlet for his absurdist take on pop music traditions, which is guided by a fundamental contradiction. "In my own mind, I've never actually tried making a pop record with Destroyer," Bejar says.

"I'm a huge fan of pop music, but at the same time, I hate popular culture," he explains. "Maybe for that reason I'm never going to get it right, and maybe I'm never going to want to get it right."

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St.; with Andre Ethier; Fri., 9 p.m., $12; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner

Photo courtesy Merge Records