Distinguished colleagues, dead music writers' brides — I apologise

Detroyer's Dan Bejar is forever teetering on edges of things, without ever quite toppling over. His voice is a nasal whine or yelp that's almost annoying; his (almost overly) literary lyrics are incredibly verbose, self-referentially cryptic tales of "a life in art" and complicated women (that he makes sound wonderful) but they're always compelling, even when you have no idea what the fuck he's on about; and the band can almost go too far into glam rock, but always manage to rein themselves in. A blog I used to read called Said The Gramaphone had a link to one track they called the gateway to Destroyer — I'd heard the band's name before and was always intrigued by reviews, but they were right about the song, it had a perfect mixture of being instantly rewarding, but I felt I needed to know much more about it and Destroyer — it was Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Sea Of Tears) from Streethawk, A Seduction, which unfortunately is not a concept album about a crime-fighting talking motorbike. This one, Rubies, is my favourite at the moment.

I remember buying it on vinyl, and listening to it for the first time really loud whilst looking at the cover. The photo got me thinking that he looked like he had a good life, sitting there all intellectual with his beard, full bookcase and cute girlfriend. I was about to express this out loud, but looked aound me, saw my full bookcase and my beautiful girlfriend standing in the doorway, and decided to shut my mouth. It's like a slightly budget version of Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home.