• Voto:
Daniel Bejar, autore di tutti i brani ed unico elemento inamovibile dell'ensamble chiamato Destroyer, è affetto da una lucida follia, che si accompagna ad una specie di aura che distingue da sempre i "cavalli di razza"; di ciò mi ero già accorto ascoltando il suo precedente raccomandato lavoro, "Your Blues", con il quale l'ho, ahimè, tardivamente scoperto.
Il barbuto "Distruttore", infatti, è nell'agone musicale da almeno una decade, ponendosi alla testa di quell'armata multicolore proveniente dal Canada che si è data una "mission impossible": il trionfo di un pop qualitativo, talvolta orchestrale, ricco d'influenze soprattutto europee, l'art-rock in particolare, che non abbia come principale sua preoccupazione la scalata delle charts. A tal fine il contributo di Bejar come autore e chitarrista è fondamentale sia per principale progetto al quale partecipa, The New Pornographers, sorta di all stars canadese dell'indiepop nata verso la fine del passato millennio, sia come punto di riferimento per tutta la vitalissima scena che si muove tra Vancouver e Toronto, con artisti del calibro di The Dears, Stars, Feist, Apostle of Hustle, solo per citarne alcuni.
Con l'ultimo suo album "Rubies" egli conferma, fortunatamente per coloro che amano le sue dispari e prosperose melodie, di non essere guarito, anzi. Per certi aspetti l'impresa alla quale questa volta si è votato è ancora più complicata della precedente. Infatti, più che con "Your Blues", le influenze, le citazioni aumentano e l'accostamento di elementi musicali di generi apparentemente distanti divengono più arditi e sorprendenti. Con tutto quest'incandescente ed eterogeo materiale (il miglior pop d'ascendenza albionica, rock tra Bowie e T. Rex, la musica da camera, il folk americano, il blues) più d'uno si sarebbe scottato oppure avrebbe prodotto intrugli molto poco appetibili. Bejar e il suo gruppo riescono, invece, a dominarlo e a produrre canzoni che hanno un fascino perverso, finendo per attrarti come una calamita. Brani che spesso superano i cinque minuti, che non hanno fretta di concludere, multicentrici, che a volte traccheggiano pigramente su un arpeggio di chitarra o su un ritornello.
Già il primo, quello che dà il titolo all'album, sarebbe una presentazione di disarmante ingenuità, quasi autolesionistica, per il pop nove e passa minuti sono oggi più che mai un'eternità, se non vi fosse il sospetto che è stato posto lì proprio al fine di selezionare subito coloro che possono andare oltre, la minoranza che condivide i suoi stessi ideali estetici. Il brano sembra scritto e cantato nella prima parte da un Paddy McAloon dedito all'alcool e con un più caustico senso dell'umorismo, per poi perdere man mano la verve e l'elettricità, divenendo così un'acustica ed intima ballata; sia detto senza mezzi termini: altri, con gli spunti e le idee presenti qui solo, ci fanno un mezzo album.
"European Oils" è il brano più orecchiabile e solare, sarà difficile non canticchiarlo nelle giornate sì, con un finale in crescendo, ormai una specie di marchio di fabbrica, al quale, oltre al piano e ai cori, partecipa anche un assolo di chitarra elettrica di buona fattura. Così come si finirà per non poter fare a meno di canzoni come "Painter in Your Pocket", col suo incedere percussivo, la chitarra di Dan a ricamare indolenti melodie e un accattivante ritornello che compare verso la fine, non lasciandoti scampo; oppure di brani più tirati come "3000 Flowers", omaggio rispettoso ma non riverente al Duca Bianco. La versatilità e le potenzialità del nostro anche in campo più propriamente "rock" finiscono per sorprenderti soprattutto nel brano che chiude il lavoro, "Sick Priest Learns to Last Forever", un blues elettrico di vaga ispirazione hendrixiana.
Un album, quindi, denso e leggero, spensierato e malinconico allo stesso tempo, che conferma la classe pura e la smodata fantasia di Bejar, da songwriter di gran livello. Credo proprio che questi "rubini" faranno bella mostra nel personale diadema di fine anno.
Elenco tracce testi e samples
01 Rubies (09:25)
Dueling cyclones jackknife.
They got eyes for your wife and the blood that lives in her heart.
Cast myself towards infinity.
Trust me, I had my reasons.
Had a dress for every season, it was worth it.
Pulled into town relatively free of hassle.
Secured a room at the castle, it paid for itself.
Checked out my surroundings, headed down to Thornton Park.
Find your way.
Discover that things are dark.
Shadowy figures babbling on about typical rural shit.
I wave bye to them in a modern way and increase my stay at the
dock of the bay.
Quiet, Ruby, someone's coming.
Approach with stealth.
Oh, it's just your precious American Underground
and it is born of wealth.
With not a writer in the lot.
Sapphires vie for your attention
Cheap dancers, they mean well in their way.
But Priest says - Please, I can't stand my knees
And I can't bear her raven tresses caught up in a breeze like that!
Blessed doctor, do your worst.
Cut me open, remove this thirst.
Hidden, but near.
A series of visions, I won't repeat them here.
I won't repeat them here.
Typical me, typical me.
I gave my cargo to the sea.
I gave the water what it always wanted to be.
Look to the West!
Ah look it's no contest - Proud Mary said as she lit the fuse.
I wanted you, I wanted your blues
Your Blues.
All good things must come to an end.
The bad ones just go on forever
Isn't that what I just said?
It is Now and it is Never.
It is Now and it is Never.
It is Now and it is Never.
It is Now and it is Never.
Don't worry about her.
She's been known to appreciate the elegance of an empty room.
Look, I made you this broom.
A predicate warning to the sun -
This Night advances on...
The sketchy crowd shows me drawings, they're alright.
An alternately dim and frightful waste.
Now come on honey let's go outside.
You disrupt the world's disorder just by virtue of your grace, you know...
I didn't want to go, but leave I must...
As gratifying as this dust was.
Please don't wake me from this - my golden slumber -
I am proud to be a part of this number!
02 Your Blood (04:15)
I went for you in military times and, then, I waited well into the 2300s.
I made my way through the Union Street design kids.
They were alright.
They were on fire.
They harbored an elementary desire to do good works.
I bought 'em all, I bought 'em all!
I made donations to The Plague, and The Fall and The Old Grey Mare in her stall!
Endangered Ape, a couple years in Solitary never really hurt anyone.
Distinguished colleagues, dead music-writers' brides - I apologize.
They were alright.
They were on fire.
They harbored an elementary desire to do good works.
I bought 'em all, I bought 'em all!
I made donations to The Plague, and The Fall and The Old Grey Mare in her stall.
I don't know, I guess I'm doing alright.
Tabitha takes another stab at becoming light.
She never wants to go.
Always want to stay illuminated.
Ride towards the dawn, Quicksilver on the side of nothing.
Never had a chance.
Never had to choose Your Blood versus Your Blues.
03 European Oils (04:54)
I made a tomb for all the incompatible cells I could take and I brought bells to the wake. And you... you didn't mind shedding your beautiful European blood as I screamed: "death to the murderers we've loved all our lives!"
I was good with names, I had a way with faces and I was the dominant theme in a number of places. And you... you didn't mind mixing your beautiful European oils for a still life. Oh Candice, we should've run for our lives!
When I'm at war I insist on a slaughter and getting it on with the hangman's daughter. She needs release. She needs to feel at ease with her father, the fucking maniac.
I made a tomb for all the incompatible cells I could take and I brought bells to the wake. And you... you didn't mind shedding your beautiful European blood as I screamed: "death to the murderers we've loved all our lives!"
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I wanted you, I wanted these treasures, too.
05 Looters' Follies (07:26)
You can huff and you can puff but you'll never destroy that stuff.
Finally, I see why, I suppose...
Kid, you better change your feathers cause you'll never fly with those things...
In These Nights... The boys sing - "Hello, emptiness! I heard you're alright.
I heard you're alright.
I've heard of you..."
A body aching, fragile, and pale: dark valleys house its trail.
Why can't you see that a life in art and a life of mimicry -
it's the same thing!?!
The room was crowded, and though you couldn't care less about it,
That much was true.
That month - another version of this miniature Rome to set fire to.
Why did we stop fucking around?
Girls like gazelles graze.
Boys wearing bells blaze new trails in sound.
I looked up.
I looked around.
A famous Toronto painter shot me down.
"Oh, I've busted my ass on these streets too long," he said.
I set fire to the bed and tore his gown...
Felt some mercurial presence, hitherto unknown.
It was the sun. It was a stone falling through blank space.
It was that jewel-encrusted roan getting in my face.
Looked across the way to The Princess Rooms.
I saw brides and their grooms.
I heard the sound of bells ringing!
Cinders look back fondly upon a house on fire when across
an ocean we go.
We row and we row and we tire.
Now, step out of the darkness and into the light.
Yeah, it's common knowledge I've been doing alright.
No, I can't complain.
On the Eastside, midwives' lives go down the drain all cause our babies are dying...
I lifted the veil to see nature's trickery revealed as pure shit
from which nothing ever rose cause nothing ever could.
I swear somewhere the truth lies within this wood.
I swear, Looters' Follies has never sounded so good.
And, win or lose - what's the difference?...
06 3000 Flowers (03:46)
She was part of an inner circle.
Daughters of The Motherland.
Like a ship lit up at sea,
with scars where its talons used to be...
I was a slow learner, I moved in flourishes.
I was a late-bloomer, I moved in flourishes.
Last man on the scene...
Fresh face on a dying scene...
100th of a 'wet, black bough'...
I was Clytæmnestra on a good day, dispensing wisdom to
the uninitiated...
The initiates brought out in tumbrils shat out by the dawn...
Shat out by the dawn...
And, like a woman, I was kept as the wealthy
American Underground wept
at the sight of Rhode Island sinking into the sea.
And the sky still reigned supreme over the land as The Music Lovers
sat cross-legged in the sand and in Time and in Space, and (in other
words) in a band who, much like churchgoers, fuck themselves... up...
07 A Dangerous Woman Up to a Point (06:02)
A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"As per your wishes, I left you for dead.
I left England to the English."
Is it always one thing or the other with you?
"Forgive them, my Lord, they know not what they do!"
"Hey, your friends are fucked, in so far, as your friends are an ancient
beast bronzed in tar!"
Have I told you lately that I love you?
Did I fail to mention there's a sword hanging above you?
"Those who love Zeppelin will soon betray Floyd."
I cast off these couplets in honor of the void.
I was here to stay.
I would weather the storm.
I pictured heaven on earth made of clay as your form dictated...
I went down to the garden with the noblest of intentions.
I felt the need to be brief.
I stuck a rose between my teeth and had a laugh.
The sun sets at the speed of light, so I thought I also might leave this
Port of Woe on tall ships made of snow invading the sun.
A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"I've never read 'so-and-so, so why mention him here, in this square
where culprits axe me, my dear.
Tried to enjoy myself at the Society Ball, really I did.
Froze on Union Street, it was springtime, I was just a kid lost in a map
of the stars others called 'your eyes.'
It was a trap!
It was a good time!
It was hard to realize!...
I can't win.
I can't even walk.
Baby, you should talk.
Baby, you should hear what you're saying.
They said - "Don't look back!" but I looked back.
It was a bore.
It was a fucking horror.
It was - well, honey, you know quite well what you are...
A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"People come, and people go, and people lie nameless in the snow..."
08 Priest's Knees (03:08)
and i was just another
west coast maximalist
exploring the blues
ignoring the news
from the front
where they're taking her
children away
taking them where they wanna go
tall ships made of snow
invading the sun
some people call me 'angel'
on their death bed in a dream
that's right
the Czar's father thought
things could've gone differently last night
but they didn't
and i couldn't bear
to follow you there
where trauma exists in the sky
20th century masters
welcome these disasters
and so do i. but no!
oh baby please don't go
up into it.
09 Watercolours Into the Ocean (04:46)
listening to strawberry wine
for the 131st time
it was 1987 and it was spring
it's 1987 all the time
now it's 1987 all the time
well we were there
too thin too fair
downing your third drink
standing at arm's length
in the square
just off
a mildly successful
killing rampage
where good writers go
to find one thing
and stick with it
oh life
is bigger
than a life on the run
from the united states
and her friends
on this night
made of jewels
it took three
carabinieri
to peel em off the streets of the town
she's named after
dragging the lagoon was a disaster
they found him alive and
relatively well
well some situations
seek redressing
some songs just
go testing, testing,
i took a picture
i was sick of motion
and wore her watercolours into the ocean
and wore her watercolours into the ocean
Carico i commenti... con calma
