Into the Woods

Having never been lost in the woods myself, the advice of “follow your own footsteps back” seems to make perfectly good sense. But this advice is erroneous; that could simply mean taking the same missteps again. Perhaps it’s better to follow up on instinct, accept the unknown variables and make new tracks toward progress, be they on untrodden ground. Daniel Bejar, the only constant member of Vancouver’s Destroyer, has recently taken steps that have led him away from the familiar and thoroughly explored road of underground collegiate rock. With Your Blues, Destroyer’s fifth album to date (and second for Merge Records), Bejar’s path has diverged from the tenets of electric guitars and bass/drum rhythm sections, and into the shadier realms of MIDI-generated orchestration; a bold move for someone whose notoriety was achieved through his tenure as a songwriter for Canadian pop-rockers The New Pornographers and the glam rock bombast-come-experimental tinkering of his solo material. But as Bejar explains, necessity is the mother of invention, and having burned himself out on the proverbial sounds of the rock world, it was merely time to go his own way.
“I think it stemmed from reacting against rock music,” says Bejar when asked why Your Blues sounds fairly unrelated to his other four albums. “That’s an idea I’ve had for a while and it also happened to coincide with me being sick of the whole scene, so that’s how it came about.”
Ditching the rock band formula altogether, Your Blues narrows its aural focus down to Daniel Bejar’s nasally rendered whimsical stories, cushioned upon the twinkling of woodwinds, strings and horns, all reproduced from synth modules and performed electronically through MIDI programming. But while this would allow for a rich texture of synthesized instruments, that approach didn’t fit in with Bejar’s intent. No sweeping Electric Light Orchestra string sections; Your Blues would be an experiment in the possibilities of musical restraint.
“The initial vision was kinda flattened out, rant-y, tuneless with a mixture of synthetic drones and synthetic strings in the background — kinda stark,” he reveals. “The songs that I brought to the table ended up being kind of a lot more active pop songs, but we still kept to our guns on most things. The idea was to have no rhythm section to make sure it didn’t sound like a rock record, so we only broke that rule once or twice. And to have it be heavy with orchestral sounds and those ‘80s new age synth sounds; keep it heavily orchestrated but also kinda minimal and empty at the same time, which when you don’t have bass and drums is pretty easy to do — keep it reverb-y, spacey.”
The aesthetic Bejar chose to pursue has fueled his songs with a rare and interesting contrast; a fantastical artifice, if you will. His dramatic flair for vocal delivery is given a heightened sense of theatrics through Your Blues’ orchestral backing, and the music itself, while ultimately melodious, remains spacious amidst new age synth pads, striking piano chords, plucked strings and contrasting counter-melodies. The nature of the MIDI sounds themselves cast the songs in planned artificiality; Destroyer’s organic songcraft mixed with cold, robotic precision. The end result sounds nothing like the orchestral pop of fellow countryman Rufus Wainwright, nor rock music performed with classical instruments, or even a Broadway musical.
“I tried to steer clear of a certain indie rock style of nods to symphonic music or to chamber quartets and stuff like that, or droning on one chord by a bunch of people,” Bejar explains. “I wanted the orchestrations to be kind of muscular or something, [but] they couldn’t possibly be because they were done on a sound module. At least the melodies themselves kinda provide the momentum for the songs, especially because there’s no rhythm section or any [electric] guitars, just an acoustic guitar.”
Bejar mentions that he and his production duo JC/DC were aiming for natural instrumental sounds, a difficult feat when working exclusively with sound modules. The achievement of realistic-sounding instruments is debatable, but to his untrained ear, Bejar says the instruments sound true to life, for the most part.
“Maybe that’s the nature of MIDI, but I definitely didn’t want to make a new wave-y sounding record,” he says. “I kinda wanted to get the same sound module that maybe Paul Shaffer or someone like that has, and maybe that’s why I recognize a lot of the sounds from television commercials, but I wanted to get as close to the actual instrument that’s being copied as possible. I didn’t want a hokey synth sound when it’s supposed to sound like a string orchestra. Then again, my ears are maybe a little more innocent than others and I got easily impressed with how things sounded, but I think MIDI is kinda good for strings and woodwinds, stuff like that…not so good for horns, maybe.”
Of course, this approach is natural in a recording studio setting, but the road is another matter. His current tour with the group Frog Eyes (Absolutely Kosher Records) as both his opening act and his backing band will render the songs from Your Blues in a more typical rock fashion, throwing the symphonic approach out the window. Yet the accompanying arrangements of Destroyer’s songs are but mere packaging; the beauty lies at the core of Bejar’s acoustic guitar and tales of fancy.
Unafraid of the unexplored, and privy to the whims and winds of change, Destroyer’s compass may spin haphazardly, but Daniel Bejar’s muse leads on through uncharted territory. As long as Bejar follows his instincts, his feet will continue to fall on that difficult, but ultimately desirable path.

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