Destroyer, Bottleneck- Lawrence
DESTROYER SETLIST
DESTROYER TOUR DATES May 15 Beer City Music Hall Oklahoma City, OK
May 16 Tulips Fort Worth, TX May 17 The Mohawk Austin, TX May 19 Crescent Ballroom Phoenix, AZ May 20 The Belasco Los Angeles, CA May 21 The UC Theatre Berkeley, CA May 22 Revolution Hall Portland, OR Jun 24 Kino Šiška (Centre for Urban Culture) Ljubljana, Slovenia Jun 30 Open'er Festival 2022 Gdynia, Poland Jul 2 Vida Festival 2022 Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain Jul 5 MUSICBOX LISBOA Lisbon, Portugal Sep 21 Paradiso Amsterdam, NL Sep 21-24 Reeperbahn Festival 2022 Hamburg, Germany Sep 23 Mejeriet Lund, Sweden Sep 24 Slaktkyrkan Johanneshov, Sweden Sep 25 Parkteatret Scene Oslo, Norway Sep 26 VEGA Copenhagen, Denmark Sep 29 Lido Berlin, Germany Sep 30 Gebäude 9 Cologne, Germany Oct 1 Rote Fabrik Zürich, Switzerland Oct 2 Südpol Luzern, Switzerland Oct 4 UT Connewitz Leipzig, Germany Oct 5 Club Manufaktur Schorndorf, Germany Oct 6 La Chapelle, Les Trinitaires Metz, France Oct 7 Petit Bain Paris, France Oct 8 C-mine Genk, Belgium Oct 9 TRIX Borgerhout, Belgium Oct 11 The Button Factory Dublin, Ireland Oct 12 Drygate Glasgow, UK Oct 13 Brudenell Social Club Leeds, UK Oct 14 EartH London, UK Read More
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A day of ceremony, a night of musical immersion-
As The University of Kansas ends its current year, recent graduates prepped gowns and mortar board caps for their rite of passage walk down The Hill at Mount Oread to receive their diplomas, but inside the downtown walls of The Bottleneck, Vancouver band Destroyer returned to town to amaze, vex, and celebrate for the graduates, and everyone else present.
The evening began with a well received forty-five minute from Philadelphia’s Rosali (stylized as ROSALI) in support of third album, last year’s No Medium. The singer-songwriter is aka Rosali Middleman and the guitarist for The Long Hots and was backed by members of acclaimed Nebraska band the David Nance Group for their first Lawrence appearance.
Their music has been previously described as “Chrissie Hynde fronting Crazy Horse” but the vocals often have more of an Aimee Mann lightness about them, though it can also quickly move from electric folk to a more meaty, dense and louder blend.
The newest album was supposedly written on a two-week sabbatical on a South Carolina farm and influenced by harmonographs– swinging pendulums that create geometric illustrations of music, and the concepts of balance and originating from a fixed point, do show some reflection in the songs.
“Mouth”, the new album’s opening track finds Rosali not afraid to emotionally open and visualize, singing, “East of the river I was traveling on, watch me lie, undone, rest me in a forest, overgrown”. Destroyer keyboardist Ted Bois assisted on a dreamy mid-set song and the final number was precluded by a cacophony of reverb, feedback, and electronic howls.
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As for the headliner, this was a bit full circle to have Destroyer return to Lawrence and play an eighty-five minute set, as they were one of the last bands we witnessed live in late February 2020, before the global lockdown.
The new album is called Labyrinthitis (stylized in all caps, on Merge Records) which medically refers to an inner ear infection, often resulting in vertigo and immersive dizziness, and something band leader Dan Bejar was convinced he had, after a period of self-diagnosis (though never confirmed).
Though still often thought of as a solo project, Bejar’s bandmates have all been with him over a decade and the key missing piece that we didn’t see the last time in town, trumpeter JP Carter, had returned with great effect and impact – adding a further cosmopolitan elegance to songs, self-sampling and with pedal effects to make his sonic presence even more prominent.
After beginning with the new album’s opener, Bejar and band moved next into the spanning “June” a seven-minute tempo-changer with Bejar even referring to its spoken-word fragments on paper as he sang, determined to get them all letter-perfect.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this set” Bejar remarked slyly, he not one to say much at all between songs, preferring instead to crouch and have a swig of beer as the band ends the songs with exclamations, but he did also commend all the recent graduates in the crowd as well.
Lead single from the new record, “Tintoretto, It’s For You” came across even more twisted live, its haphazard synth-metal tones and manic drums over Bejar singing, “the ceiling’s on fire and the contract is binding”, the grim reaper calling to take the famed Italian painter.
A couple of tracks from 2020’s Have We Met- “It Just Doesn’t Happen” and “Cue Synthesizer” still hold up strongly and the slow croon of 2015’s “The River” built into a peak with Bejar’s character admitting, “I’m over, before I begin to go”.
Cowbell powered the new swirling, “It Takes a Thief” and longtime fans roared at the first electro notes of 2011’s breakthrough, “Kaputt”. 2020’s “foolssong” cinematically swelled, from its beginning homage lines from Spearhead’s “Hole in the Bucket” to it’s “da,da,da” ending and the main set concluded with 2006’s elongated “Looters’ Follies”.
The encore began with 2011’s “Chinatown” filled in with vivid musical bursts from Carter’s trumpet and Bejar admitting “I can’t walk away” and would end by going back more than two decades with “Streethawk I”.
“Yes, you are renewed” Bejar sings in the Destroyer song, “June”- immersion complete.
(click on any image to enlarge and see in full)
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Destroyer at The Bottleneck, Lawrence (2022-05-14) |
| john (johnc@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com |
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