Destroyer's Kaputt. The Re-Establishment of Fine Caviar -or Who the Fuck Eats Caviar?

Destroyer. Kaputt. My year. Done. This is a response to the misguided praising of an album that deserved far more respect and admiration than it's received to date. This is about Destroyer's 2011 album Kaputt. And I want to start with something almost entirely unrelated.

*(If you prefer to relate, you can skip my life story and continue at the appropriate asterisk.)

Smooth Jazz. A certain part of my soul will forever be branded by its foul existence. I never talk about this, but my parents absolutely love smooth jazz. Throughout my childhood, or more accurately, throughout my entire time in their house, they listened to it constantly. When I was 8, when I was 21. smooth jazz. I mean, my Mom still rocks Dave Koz's Christmas CD every December. Kenny G's rendition of Auld Lang Syne (paired with a patriotic pastiche of memorable American quotes) resonates in the halls every year. So it makes sense, on some level, how the faint remnants of a certain, rather embarrassing musical genre might stick with me. Might brandish my ego. Right? Well, if my concision hasn't convinced you... It makes sense like this:

When you're 8, music doesn't mean anything. Or more precisely: it means the same as everything else. It's something you may or may not take naturally too; it's kind of fun to play, capitalistic enough to buy and straight-up accessible enough to mold to the shape of your life, but it doesn't mean a whole lot. It's the same as everything else. But parents. Parents mean a lot to an eight-year old. We're talking priorities here. I mean, they're old, and mature. They have a lot of money, personal belongings, and the power to take away your personal belongings. They like music that sounds cool and speak in tongues about it - an entire world unexplored. So naturally, parents know what's up when it comes to music. A equals B equals C. This is important logic.

Following this logic, it also makes sense how I would idolize them. 65 GTO's, family gatherings, Kevin Costner, Jesus, etc. Entirely copying them was good enough for my 8 year old self. I took piano lessons like my Mom and tried to play hockey like my Dad. But nothing came close to the idolization surrounding their general abilities in, knowledge of, and taste connected to and with music. I adored the music they listened to. And that musical love was something I straight-up unabashedly copied. To this day I still copy it. Seriously, if Johnny Lang's jeans were easy for an 8 year old to obtain, I would have been that 8 year old. I didn't understand that these elders had (musical) flaws. I didn't have the capacity to question my parents taste in music. Sure, my Mom and Dad had gems in their music collections, but the shit they listened to for fun? Now, all I want to do is vomit down the front of my shirt. Then: that shit was (supposed to be) dope. Peter White was apparently amazing and Basia sang some great songs. That's how it was, plain and simple. I legitimately gave it a shot... and like the several confused and failed years of praise-and-worship = seeing Jesus, I tried. I definitely remember a shit-wrecked encounter with Gato Barbieri's Que Pasa where my head exploded. And I did, as much as I hate to admit it, establish a not-so-ironic love for George Benson's Breezin, but for the most part, while my parents beasted Joe Sample on numerous car rides around the Minneapolis lakes, I looked out the window and thought about how awesome it would become. I envisioned David Sanborn's ostensible hyper-passion the same way I envisioned eating caviar as a grown-up and how awesome that would probably be. I just didn't see it yet: someday, when I'm older, then I'll get it. Then I'll understand it.

Obviously, I never understood it the way I envisioned because people don't eat caviar. My parents stopped being idols and became parents. Naturally, I questioned what was once infallible; music I had so immaturely obsessed over lost its surreal sheen. If music once obsessed over became dull, imagine what musical confusion turned into. Shit dude. I fucking hated smooth jazz. Everything about it. As I developed a love for what my pretentious High-School self thought was “real jazz,” I also developed a love for attempting to define what Smooth Jazz was and what made it so terrible. Seriously, don't even try. I know way too many smooth-jazz artists for the reason of antipathy strictly. I never gave myself a good explanation – no way could I webster that shit. For year's, I turned my nose down at it, mocked my Mom for attending Jeff Lorber's Christmas party, my Dad for utilizing Candy Dulfer as the new-stereo-system test-tone. To my arrogant stuck-up self, Smooth Jazz was terrible, but I didn't have a reason. Any rational attempt at differentiating it from the more traditional 70's and 80's Jazz forms that I respected (Fusion, Jazz-Funk, Jazz-Rock) fell far short of acceptable. I just gave up. I moved to a college where I didn't have to think about it - Smooth Jazz sat on the shelf, completely loathed but entirely undefined by your's truly.

And (*) this is where I turn to Destroyer's amazing release from 2011; Kaputt. An album has never been so aptly named. When it came out, everybody pretty much adored it. It earned the correct scores, ranked in the correct “best-new”s, and wound up on my shit-to-listen-to list, which soon became the only thing on my shit-to-listen-to list. What I realize now is that I had unknowingly stopped actually reading the reviews that put it on that hyphenated list; I was really just browsing to see what was new and what was supposed to be good so I might, in a way, bolster my future. And Kaputt was supposed to be really good. I, again, didn't even realize I had forgotten to read a single thing they had to say about it. I couldn't just let them poke me incessantly for a couple months, like I would have four years ago. Following the true masochistic tendencies of my subconscious, I waited for that punch in the face, as I wandered in unknown solitude, developing my own opinions about Kaputt, while I and it unintentionally destroyed my 2011 (apt pun, I know). For the record, thanks Destroyer. My top 10 is like 9 albums long. And number 9 is really pushing it.

By the end of June, my face realllly hurt. And, just so we're clear, that's not a metaphor for the confidence I hold in my opinions, it's more a metaphor for the sake of metaphors. It's more a metaphor for the feeling of never having been punched in the face before. I'll go into more depth on the actual album later, so bear with the abridged version of my opinions: what I heard as an entirely groundbreaking collection of songs built on true ensemble playing, the kind of instrumental interaction seldom (never) heard in indie rock, a lyricist at the top of his game, and some of the most interesting production of 2011 was called... smooth-jazz. Wait, what? That's when I realized I really hadn't been reading what they were writing. These people just had to go bringing Smooth Jazz and that dreaded definition entirely back into my life. Big-Time. WTF everyone? No way could I hold onto the notions and ideas I developed (in solitude) about Kaputt when every single critic was ranting about it and not feel betrayed. Not just ranting about it; belittling the shit out of it. No way could I ignore the general consensus, ignore the sheer majority of music critics, the metropolis they populate. This was all cited as Smooth Jazz by the metropolis. Bah! Smooth Jazz? Soft-rock? Sade? What?? The general consensus also revealed something rather astonishing. Something I've been feeling for a couple years now but never had any real evidence to prove my gut right.

These critics, in what I came to see as an exercise in sheer efficiency, exiled Destroyer's “sound” to the smooth/soft dungeons of distaste. How quickly could one really tag Kaputt as kitsch, you ask? Well, I've taken the liberty of compiling a best-of list – a sort of competition, as it were.

1. The simply-named Scott from No Genre, last paragraph. “The appropriation of smooth jazz/soft rock kitsch isn’t funny or inventive or postmodern; it’s depressing.”
2. Matthew Fiander of Popmatters, a little earlier than Scott. “At its base...a soft-rock album... right down to the quasi-smoky sax fills and airy drumming.”
3. Ben Rateliff of the Times, late 2nd paragraph. “Basically it’s Mr. Bejar’s late-70s-and-early-80s ambient and new-romantic tag-sale blowout, swathed in cheesy electronic drums with strokes of flute and trumpet and purely decorative tenor saxophone.”
4. Ryan Dombal, in Pitchfork's yearly round-up-blurb, second paragraph: “ The languid music constantly flirts with bad taste stalwarts like lite jazz and soft rock.”
5. Dombol's brethren, Mark Richardson, in his full review from early 2011, first paragraph. “The production and arrangements evoke a narrow window of time-- sometime between, say, 1977 and 1984, or between Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good" and Sade's Diamond Life with stops along the way for Roxy Music's Avalon and Steely Dan's Gaucho. It slides between soft rock, smooth jazz, and new romantic pop.”
6. Ed Comental, for Tiny Mix Tapes, third sentence: “Daniel Bejar here indulges in some of the most poorly regarded pop genres of all time: smooth jazz, new age ambient, easy listening, and white disco.”
7. Third-place, AllMusic's Kristopher Monger, second sentence . “Kaputt is fully committed to its cause, wrapping everything up in a pristine, immaculately produced biosphere that’s filled to the brim with twinkling synths, soft rock drums, and enough wailing trumpets and saxophones to out-mellow Kenny G, David Sanborn, and Dave Koz combined.”
8. Technically, the runner-up is really the winner, as he uttered this before anything else. Keelan H of Sputnikmusic, first sentence. “Smooth jazz, soft-rock disco, and 80’s new wave are volatile genres to be playing with if you’re Dan Bejar (or, anybody for that matter). If you were to poll the average Destroyer fan regarding their favourite genres, these three wouldn’t exactly be popular choices.”
9. Laura Snapes' review for NME, also first sentence. “To anyone who experienced Hall & Oates’ ’80s reign, pastel horns, louche bass and reverb signify the decade’s worst excesses; to us, their cheesiness is as mysterious as finding flamingo slacks covered in suspect stains in your parents’ attic.” If not for anything other than Bejar's lyric (Melodymaker, NME, allsoundslikeadreamtome), that takes the cake.

Compiling this startling collection of quotes was by no means difficult; every single review likens Destroyer's sound on Kaputt to a smooth-jazz/soft-rock aesthetic defined by the bands who were actually associated with that it when they were thriving, coupled with a colorful index of arbitrary adjectives (re: slinky, smooth, lite (sic), cheesy, smoky, easy, romantic, et al.) Simply search google for “Destroyer Kaputt saxophone.” Every single reference to the instrument is paired with one the adjectives listed. I'm not kidding: “Dreamy saxophone solos.” “Supple and buttery.” “Soft-driven saxophone.” “Cheesy saxophones solos.” “Buttery-sax-segueing-easily-into--makeout-inducing-smooth-jazz vibe.” “The sax solos alone will be enough to send many people screaming.” I mean, seriously - those were from the first page. Kinda sounds like the metropolis had a town meeting and agreed on some things. They also agreed to just kind of forget about some differences. Ok, they really forgot about some differences.

Popular music criticism used to be so ruthless in regards to minute discrepancies. So closely associated with the ability to boil down a band's sound into two-words-by-making-up-two-words (shit-gaze, chillwave, post-metal, post-dubstep etc.) for the sake of showing, like it or not, how different two syllables/phrases/songs/albums/artists etc. were. And it was effective. But then Kaputt hit. And they kind of forgot that smooth-jazz and soft-rock were different. Two massive genres, each with its own respective college-library of material, became synonymous. I mean, sure, to the average person, they're the same. And to the average person, they're whatever. And pitchfork's never enjoyed showing the average person how stupid they are. And Criticism's about stating the obvious and being obsolete. Right.

What Destroyer really did was take an inventory of sorts. They released an enigmatic masterpiece, an era-defining piece of art, and asked the critics to authenticate it. To listen, criticize, analyze, reference, et al. Ya know, do what critics do. Just set the loop and then go wild. What this inventory of today's collective critical analysis and authentication of popular-music revealed is the scary reality that the popular-music criticism of today is boring – not just monotonous and bland, but unimportant. It's transformed into its shamed conservative anti-radical sibling. Journalism. Turns out, the employees have been jackin merch unnoticed for a couple years. Robbing the company (ok, I'm done with this analogy) tradition of its most effective weapon: Name-Dropping.

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