Contrary to what might be indicated by the album title, this is not the final Destroyer LP. And a good thing, too – the Canadian combo just keeps getting better, and it’d be a real shame for it to quit now. For Kaputt, Daniel Bejar moves his troop towards even greater accessibility. Not that prior records didn’t feature plenty of hooks, but on Kaputt Bejar’s really indulging himself in instantly appealing melodies and lyrics a shade less dense and enigmatic. Taking a cue from the more cerebral New Romantics of the 80s, Bejar and co-producers John Collins and David Carswell set his musings on love, politics and artistic effort in a lush bed of jazz- and soul-inflected, electronically-enhanced smart pop, as if the musicians started recording right after a listening jag of Danny Wilson, Blue Nile, Everything But the Girl and Johnny Hates Jazz records. Squealing horns dance with sedate guitars, rubbery bass duets with electronic handclaps and melody makes sweet, sweet love to groove. Whether Bejar’s singing a cipher like “I wrote a song for America/They told me it was clever” or something more emotionally open like “Listen, I’ve been drinking/As our house lies in ruin,” Bejar brims with the casual self-confidence of a lounge lizard on his home turf, knowing that every eye and ear in the room is on him even as he pretends he doesn’t notice. The upshot of all this relaxed decadence and intellectual romanticism is the invasion of gorgeous, soaring pop tunes like “Poor in Love,” “Blue Eyes” and “Savage Night at the Opera,” hit singles in a more interesting universe. Kaputt boasts Destroyer’s most arresting and beautiful music yet.
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