i am confused by certain descriptions of Destroyer’s “Kaputt”
My sense with Kaputt is that it doesn’t travel particularly well: at least some of its power relies on a particular past, and on that past having particular overtones, and if that’s not so familiar or resonant it doesn’t work quite as well. Like, I didn’t listen to sax-y soft rock in the 80s but I didn’t NOT listen to it, it isn’t something which could ever code as horrible or transgressive to me, so when I listen to Kaputt I feel there’s a whole strata of semiotic meaning I’m just not able to detect first-hand.
Plus I can’t stand his voice.
I love Kaputt, but I’ve spent the year being a little confused by the sales pitch that’s under discussion here — the one where the album is a “transgressive” reclamation of dangerously “uncool” sounds. It seems to me that indie acts have been doing that sort of thing more or less continuously for years and years. Since the early 90s, at the very least. To an extent that it’s become more of a staple — an ordinary approach — than any kind of clever or notable move.
Read Nitsuh’s whole reply: it’s very good. This makes a lot of sense - that the reason I felt frustrated by my inability to detect the “strata of semiotic meaning” is because it doesn’t exist and the people talking the album up in that way are basically wrong.
Which leaves… what? Well, the references to Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, and the Aluminium Group help clear things up as well, in that I’m not fond of any of those bands either (a couple of Stereolab singles aside). So I can with a clear conscience file Destroyer in that category: groups who are intelligent, thoughtful, admirable builders of rich, unique sound-worlds, and whose albums I intend never to hear again in my life if I can possibly help it.
