For those of you familiar with Dan Bejar and his work in both Destroyer and The New Pornographers, this song may come as a bit of a shock. It’s damn near electronic! This isn’t the Dan Bejar we know and love… or is it? Leave it to JC/DC to spend a solid year-and-a-half production time reinventing Bejar as an off-beat, near contemporary artist. Bejar has never been one to create normality, but “Chinatown” is about as strange as it gets because it lacks consistency with the man’s prior work.
Even his voice sounds leveled out and smooth. I mean, just listen to that saxophone! It’s flat out of a late 80s/early 90s cool jazz mix. But you know, I kinda like it. The key word in the above paragraph is cool, and that’s where you’ll find the consistency — Bejar always has been, and always will be, cool. And there’s all kinds of cool up in “Chinatown”.
Look forward to Destroyer’s new album, out in late January 2011 on Merge. It’s called Kaputt, and if you spring for it on vinyl (as I most certainly will), you’ll be treated with a 20-minute vinyl only bonus track called “The Laziest River”.
Download: “Chinatown” by Destroyer
[audio:101124-destroyer-chinatown.mp3|titles=Chinatown|artists=Destroyer]
