To a listener, your lyrical persona has remained far more consistent than any kind of musical identity. Is that how it has felt, to you?
"I have a shitload of musical interests and no particular gift for expressing any of them. Lyrically, I would say it's the opposite. My aim now is to inhabit my own voice completely, and really become a singer. My friend Carey [Mercer of Frog Eyes] once talked about this, and maybe it might involve me engaging live music differently. We'll see."
Do you treat albums as opportunities to try on new musical outfits?
"There are many different things I'd like to try. There are songs I'd never ask one group of people to play, that I would another. I think that is one of the most important things I have to be good at. I don't have to be good at the guitar, Nic [Bragg] is. I don't have to be good at the piano, Ted [Bois] is. The only thing that is asked of me is that I know what I'm dealing with. And maybe I go through periods of different fixations, like things I try to exorcise from my system. Like one day you go: 'I can't spend the rest of my life thinking about Scott Walker all day long...' Or maybe one day you wake up and go: 'What the f**k's with Bob Dylan, anyway?' I like the jazz idea of these varying combos with overlap, as opposed to the rock idea of a gang in matching jackets for the rest of their life. I think I just paraphrased the Royal Trux..."
Do your albums feel radically different, to you? Like, say, the differences between This Night and Your Blues?
"This Night was the first step towards what I figured out in Rubies, and culminated in Trouble in Dreams (which sucks, cause I f**ked up alot of the singing on that record). Your Blues was wound really tight, except for maybe the last song, 'Certain Things You Oughta Know', which is one of my favorite Destroyer recordings. It is an afterthought and essentially a demo, and just sounds like what I think of myself as sounding like. [Those albums] do feel radically different, mostly 'cause Destroyer is always first and foremost a musical collaboration, and what could be more different from Nic and Fisher [Rose]'s vision than Your Blues."
What ideas did you have in mind for Kaputt? What did you want to do differently, perhaps, this time?
"I had the instrumentation in mind. Treated trumpets. I had Joseph Shabason in mind, I'd spent a few weeks on tour listening to his playing and it always struck me. I had Nic in mind, cause I always do, and deep down I knew it would be good for the record to have a few explosive moments, which is something he can bring, amongst a bunch of other things. I knew I wanted played drums mixed with programmed drums, cause someone told me that's what [Roxy Music] did on Avalon. And I really like the linndrum sound. I knew I wanted fretless bass, and really loud bass in general, played in that way where what disco and new wave thinks of jazz music seems to overlap. I wanted to barely sing, by this I mean be fiercely casual; I wanted way more time for the music to be music. I wanted an absence of chord structure tyranny —though in pop music you can't really ever get away from that— and synths are a good way of doing that, kind of. And at some point I decided, not that I really wanted back-up vocals on the record, but that I wanted Sibel [Thrasher] on the record. I was also a little hung up on the record Avalon, I should be honest about that. Once in a while I thought about [Primal Scream's] Screamadelica."
What is this record's relationship to cultural notions of nostalgia? To celebrating/condemning past musical models?
"Same as all the other records. 'Cept people are still grappling with the 80s, and the production techniques of Brian Eno —or, should I say, the production techniques of Walter Becker, or Thomas Dolby, or Martin Hannett for that matter— more than with most decades. If I was thinking of my youth, and wondering what The Beloved had to do with my youth, I think those preoccupations mostly came up in non-musical ways... I think Rubies is way more of a strict homage to Dylan's Knopfler era, or certain later Van Morrison records, than any kind of blatant tribute Kaputt comes up with!"
Was there some kind of subversive thrill in employing a saxophone solo?
"F**k no! I don't know what people's problems are with the sax. Ever listen to the Rolling Stones? Lou Reed? Blade Runner? That s**t's good!"
How does Kaputt fit in, or not fit in, with other Destroyer LPs? Do you think of how the records relate to each other? Are they an ever-swelling family of jostling siblings?
"It breaks free of previous Destroyer records, just like This Night did. I never think about how records relate to each other. Once they're done, it's over."
I've often wondered why Frog Eyes weren't/aren't far more famous. Care to take a stab at such?
"S**t, I mean, I think we've brushed upon it a little bit already. I guess it's mostly the music underground's fault, in that you have to maybe look and talk a certain way to have your name spread like wildfire across the art schools of North America. And if that doesn't happen right off the bat, then it's probably never gonna happen, cause the underground's probably the most ageist place you can hang out, and a generation is, like, 9 months. And then the mainstream won't have you, cause your music's too good, and then you're f**ked; stuck in this no man's land, where all you get to do is exist with your really amazing music, if you have the strength. There's probably some really specific people you could ask as to why Frog Eyes aren't as famous as The Walkmen, or even Liars, and they could give you a more informed and pro-active —as in, they were active in this occurrence over the last 9 years!— answer. It's depressing, I try not to think about it too much. It makes me think what I am doing is of no value."
At the end of the '00s, many harkened back upon/sentimentalized the prior decade as a 'Golden Age' for Canadian music. How do you feel about such a notion?
"Please. I mean, I guess since no one knows what a Golden Age of Canadian music looks like, it's possible it just occurred..."
