FFFF Interview with a Mad Genius: Destroyer's Dan Bejar

Dan Bejar of Destroyer—who moonlights with the Spencer Krug and Carey Mercer supergroup Swan Lake, as well as the Neko Case and A.C. Newman supergroup The New Pornographers—is known as a writing virtuoso, one of those few and proud and usually-called-crazy in music who bring true artfulness to the words themselves, and not just the instrumentation. Inspired by his upcoming appearance at Fun Fun Fun Fest, we thought there’d be few better things than to give Dan an opportunity to jot a few things down, so we shipped off to him a handful of questions and said have at it. And he did, and delightfully so, citing Lorca and the Duino Elegies, his prejudice for Wallace Stevens over Robert Frost, how fucked most musicians would be if they had to truly worry about lyrics, and why maybe someday he’d write a book if only he weren’t “a complete stranger to real work.” Needless to say, when he takes the Yellow stage at 8:45 on Day One of Fun Fest, we’ll be in the audience, following every word.

Although you’ve said that you don’t see your music as “intellectual,” the discursive and visceral nature of your lyrics, as well as their tongue-in-cheek comedy, leads almost absentmindedly to the word poetry. And in poetry grad schools all the world over, they debate whether music lyrics constitute poetry. What do you view as the difference between the two arts and where do you see your own work on the spectrum?

The main problem with writing lyrics is that no one cares about them, and therefore they’re not important. Or they can’t discuss them ‘cause they don’t really know how. ‘Cause it’s not really their job to know how, ‘cause the majority of people don’t really listen to music in that way. Aside from Morrissey fans, or something over-the-top like that. I can’t imagine how it will change. It’s possible that in hip-hop or country music this is not the case, but everywhere else it seems to be. For awhile I thought the UK was different but I was wrong.

Of course, none of that is relevant to whether or not lyrics are poetry. Because they are. Or can be. When they’re good they are poetic and when they are bad they are not, though I’m not, here, gonna get into what my idea of “poetic” is, like I would even know how. It’s just shorthand for “stuff I like.” I don’t see my writing as “intellectual,” but that’s more me kicking at the walls of how Americans write about art. All that stuff about self-reflexiveness that comes up around Destroyer songs. All that 80s cultural studies bullshit. I try and write like Lorca or Vallejo, or Alberti’s Sobre Los Angeles. Or the Duino Elegies or Bill Fay, or The Fall. Aim ridiculously high, somehow become good. Anyway, that’s how I used to do it…I make no difference between genres of writing: lyrics, plays, poetry, films, novels, whatever. Obviously the forms demand different things, but the goal must always be to speak as perfectly as possible all the time.

"Bay of Pigs" is a masterpiece of potential interpretations, tangling realms of the purely evocative and the literal, and all of it with the contextual glaze of the song’s title cast over it. Additionally, it demonstrates your continued willingness to explore sound and scope. What projects are you working on now or are planning on for the future, and how do they relate both lyrically and sonically to "Bay of Pigs" and prior work?

I did want “Pigs” to act as a before and after, of sorts, in the chronology of Destroyer songs. Too bad it sunk into oblivion. I will take other stabs at things hinted at in those 13:37, in the near future…I thought Trouble In Dreams was my best set of writing and that album folded like a turkey, so I am embarking on a new line of thought that has to do with pop songs being unfit for any kind of writing I hold too close to my heart, which I think will be incredibly liberating…it might be good to remove myself from the proceedings a little bit. However this has nothing to do with anything I’m working on now, seeing as it was all written quite a while back, during the most intense 6 weeks of my life…but at some point in the future this new way of seeing things should kick in…

In poetry, one the many dividing lines is that defined between Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens: Frost wrote in “subjects,” where the idea precedes the composition and there is a precise goal for the endeavor, while Stevens wrote “bric-a-brac,” which was based more on a subconscious transmittance of sometimes-ambiguous wisdoms held within. What do you feel of this distinction and how it relates to your generative process?

Well, I guess the fact that I side so wholeheartedly with the Stevens side in my ideas and actions, makes me want to give Frost a fair shake, a second and third chance, though I don’t know when I will or how I will. I don’t work with ideas and concepts. At all. I’m all about action. Unless you’re talking about the world of sonic ideas. In which case I’ve occasionally worked with ideas and concepts. With extreme prejudice. I think the Frost-Stevens axis sums up the American Problem, in a nutshell. It doesn’t have to be that way, by the way.

A couple things: you’ve commented that most musicians aren’t “writers,” even if they’re composing the lyrics, and that you always write the words first. Do you feel that many musicians are missing out on this, or does the deemphasis of verbal intensity offer them a certain liberty?

The deemphasis of verbal intensity offers them not a certain liberty, but a necessary liberty. They would be fucked without it. Fucked. And this not-being-fuckedness does not go unrewarded, so how could they possibly discover that they are missing out? I think one of the finest writers in the English language, alive today, lives in Austin, or at least used to up until recently (I don’t know much about him). Anyway, definitely the best songwriter in the English language. And last time I checked his records weren’t being held up by anyone, culture mavens of the underground (youth culture) or doddering mainstream lackeys (old people), as being the be-all-end-all of records. Or even close. Which makes me either stupid and wrong, or insane. How do you deal with that? There’s liberty in not thinking you’re stupid or insane.

When a musician is highly concerned with lyrics, there’s always this sort of implicit tug-of-war between the words and the instrumentation—do you ever feel like the music is a stepchild to your words, or have the years of integration wholly fused these elements into one? Additionally, do you have any ambitions of ever doing a purely spoken word effort, or releasing a book of writing?

Destroyer music has occasionally taken a beating at the hands of not necessarily words, but the inherent melody of a phrase, and the need to have it ring out. It has, here and there especially in the old days, rendered things awkward. Partly ‘cause that was one of the initial goals of Destroyer. Make strange and unfamiliar things anthemic, beautiful or cool (1996-2000). On the other hand, I’ve written many things tossed into the dustbin of the ages ‘cause they wouldn’t work freely of their own accord over a chord structure, or just didn’t have any “music” in them. Even if as a piece of writing it was kind of cool. Spoken Word: I couldn’t do spoken word, ‘cause I don’t understand the outlet for it. Just seems like songs, but worse. I would write a book if I could invent the genre of writing for the book to be shelved in, and if I wasn’t a complete stranger to real work.

You’ve expressed a little frustration in the past at performing, as it seems your music and lyrics are built less around a physical thrashabout catharsis, but more around an almost contemplative attention to detail. Nowadays, how do you feel about performance, and have you ever seriously considered implementing a raging blowout as a means to corral a potentially unthinking audience?

I love playing rock music with a rock band. I don’t love doing it night after night in the bars of the world, but I do love it. Which doesn’t mean that the world, or even Destroyer fans, love it when I do it. Any weirdness I have in my head around performing is fucking obliterated once the drums kick in. Really. I don’t know if Destroyer will ever tour like that again, but in my heart that’s how I will always remember it. The thrashabout.

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Destroyer will be performing at Fun Fun Fun Fest on Saturday, November 7 at 8:45 on the Yellow Stage.

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