Destroyer - "Archer on the Beach"/ "Grief Point" 12"

Destroyer – “Archer on the Beach”/ “Grief Point” 12”
Merge, 2010
Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2011
Price: $6

I’m pretty sure I got a spur of the moment deal on this from Kelly when I bought Kaputt at Love Garden. AWESOME. I tend to hate how the list price of 12” singles tends to be like $10 and $6 is right at the line where I will cave under the right circumstances. Well played, Love Garden, well played. “Archer on the Beach” is a pensive and subdued affair much less vibrant than anything on Kaputt. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, just moody. Extra cool points because it’s a collaboration with Tim Hecker (whom I know from having my experimental music friend play me parts of Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do it Again at various places in our college tenure and I specifically remember it was the only thing out of his collection I could stand. Hecker’s new album Ravedeath 1979 is pretty great, from the chunks of it I’ve listened to, and I wish I had more patience as a listener but I’m just too easily distracted). The B-Side is a collaboration with longtime collaborator Loscil, who did that weird last side of the Destroyer’s Rubies vinyl. It’s weirder than “Archer on the Beach,” and much more pensive, featuring some very sparse and ambient synthesized sonics and Bejar reading some stuff off a page (you can hear him turning the pages). Bejar’s reading appears to be a treatise about the song, or about quitting music (“I have lost interest in music, it is horrible”). He also appears to be drinking scotch. Or maybe ice water, but I like to pretend it is scotch. Canadian whiskey! “I think the world does not like me grim. It likes me melancholic, but not miserable. English on the Mediterranean, which is oddly enough some of the worst people there are.” The writing here, even as a testament to not making music, is beautiful and brilliant like any of Bejar’s songwriting. “The answer to the making of “Grief Point” is picnic baskets, filled with blood. Too rich, nothing at stake.” It’s the not so secret 18^th century European poet living in side Dan Bejar, and it’s little things like this cast off anti-song that makes him such a fascinating artist. Well, not just this, but the fact that something like this exists, and that he is constantly willing to change it up to keep from getting stale or boring.

P.S. If you haven't seen The Family Circus by Dan Bejar, you're missing out! (on laffs!!! Just keep hitting refresh!)