Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I chatted up a couple Destroyer superfans prior to the ensemble’s performance at Warehouse on Broadway on Sunday, October 19. My new friends were baffled when I expressed my affinity for Dan Bejar’s lyrical dissipation. The appeal for them is entirely musical.
Discovering there are apparently two mutually exclusive camps of Destroyer appreciation stunned me. Drawn to songs of dissolution, I’ve long admired Destroyer despite the band’s often unappealing musical sensibility.
The frayed decadence of the 2025 album Dan's Boogie- a woozy variant of Avalon-era Roxy Music- is the first time Destroyer’s sound properly aligns with Bejar’s predilection for themes shared by macabre authors of literary fiction such as Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch and William Trevor.
My passion for Dan’s Boogie compelled me to buy a $16.50 ticket to the show. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I was the oldest person amid the audience of approximately 250. Men who embrace the life Bejar chronicles usually don’t make it past sixty.
While his stage antics may be nothing more than sly showmanship, Bejar, 53, seemed to be living dangerously. Impeccably louche, he imbibed from a setup at the lip of the stage and occasionally employed lyric sheets.
The wall of sound from Bejar’s six-piece backing band seemed unreasonably wanton, but excess is Bejar’s raison d'être. I would have been disappointed with anything less than a reckless display of profligacy.