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Label

Dead Oceans

Destroyer

Poison Season

Destroyer's Poison Season opens swathed in Hunky Dory strings. Dan Bejar's a dashboard Bowie surveying four wracked characters--Jesus, Jacob, Judy, Jack--simultaneously Biblical and musical theatre. This bittersweet, Times Square-set fanfare is reprised twice more on the record--first as swaying, saxophone-stoked "street-rock" and then finally as a curtain-closing reverie.

Broadway Danny Bejar dramatically switches scenes with "Dream Lover," all Style Council strut and brassy, radio-ready bombast (echoes of The Boo Radleys' evergreen earworm "Wake Up Boo!"). This being Destroyer, its paramours-on-the-run exuberance is judiciously spiked by his deadpan delivery: "Oh shit, here comes the sun..."

Like the other DB, Mr. Bejar has long displayed a chameleonic instinct for change while maintaining a unified aesthetic (rather than just pinballing between reference points). No two records sound the same, but they're always uniquely Destroyer. His latest incarnation often appears to take sonic cues from a distinctly British (usually Scottish, to be precise) strain of sophisti-pop: you might hear traces of Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout, Orange Juice, or The Blow Monkeys. These songs merge a casual literary brilliance with intense melodic verve, nimble arrangements, and a certain blue-eyed soul sadness.

Playfully rueful, "Sun in the Sky" foregrounds cryptic lyrical dexterity over pop-classicist strum before gradually left-fielding into rhythmically supple, delirious avant-squall. It's as if Talk Talk took over a Lloyd Cole show. Originally released on a collaborative EP with electronic maestros Tim Hecker and Loscil (the latter's drones are retained here), a retooled "Archer on the Beach" suggests Sade swimming in The Blue Nile, smooth-jazz marimba melancholy dilated by ecstatic ambience. Flecked in heady dissonance, elusively alluring, Dan hymns its eponymous "impossible raver on your death bed" while implicitly beckoning the listener: "Careful now, watch your step, in you go."

That's Poison Season in essence: familiar yet mysterious, opaquely accessible. Arch, for sure, but ultimately elevatory.

Tracklist

• 1. Time Square, Poison Season I
  2. Dream Lover
  3. Forces From Above
  4. Hell
  5. The River
  6. Girl In A Sling
  7. Times Square
  8. Archer on the Beach
  9. Midnight Meet The Rain
  10. Solace's Bride
  11. Bangkok
  12. Sun In The Sky
  13. Time Square Poison