It's Common Knowledge I've Been Doin' Alright
Dan Bejar on "Destroyer's Rubies" at 20
The following is an introduction to a lengthy interview I conducted with Dan Bejar on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Destroyer’s Rubies. Read the full interview on Aquarium Drunkard.
Easy-listening, middle-of-the-road, simplified: these are the terms Dan Bejar used, on an afternoon in early December, to describe Destroyer’s Rubies, one of the most exquisite rock records released in the 21st century. They’re certainly not the phrases I would use to describe the album, but hell, I’m not the one who made it.
Rubies was released twenty years ago next month, the band name knit directly into the title of the record, as if its ten songs might be mistaken for the work of some other artist without explicit credit. These weren’t just anyone’s Rubies, they were Destroyer’s Rubies—as if there could be any question. The voice alone was signature enough, to say nothing of the first song’s first lines: “Duelling cyclones jackknife / They got eyes for your wife / And the blood that lives in her heart.” Who else but Bejar?
An immediate, obvious masterpiece, the album capped a remarkable decade of toil, daring, and restlessness for the man behind Destroyer. Across six increasingly impressive records, Bejar had managed to chart a crooked course from lo-fi bedroom oddball to sure-handed glam rocker to neurotic synthesizer fetishist. Along the way, he also found time to lend his talents to Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers, contributing a much-needed note of acid to indie pop classics like Electric Version and Twin Cinema. Though Bejar would continue working with the Pornos for some number of years, Rubies made it clear that his artistic destiny was his and his alone.
A synthesis of all Destroyer had ever been up until that point, Rubies is a bounty, a record bursting at the seams with undeniable tunes. The first side is one of the strongest sequences ever put to tape, each track building on what came before, pacing further along toward an uncertain catharsis: the magisterial title track, an epic poetic vision that stands alongside “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Changing of the Guards” as one of the all-time great album openers; the rollicking “Your Blues” and the fist-pumping “European Oils,” a doubleshot of hard, edgy folk-rock; the mesmerizing “Painter In Your Pocket,” a magic trick of a track. All perfect rock songs—and all prelude, too.
Catharsis arrives, finally, with “Looters’ Follies,” the lush, drunken waltz at the album’s heart. Extraordinary phrases tumble haphazardly out of Bejar’s mouth, colliding with one another, stacking, steadily, into a pyre ready to be set ablaze. Eventually the band obliges, exploding into a thicket of guitars as Bejar snarls the song’s shockingly triumphant conclusion: “Now step out of the darkness and into the light / Yeah it’s common knowledge I’ve been doin’ alright.” I’m still not sure exactly what he’s getting at with that line, but I don’t need to be. The truth of the song is right there in my ears, burning, swooning, braying with all the gusto of a man who knows he’s at the top of his game.
Which he undoubtedly was. Rubies is not always my favorite Destroyer record—that, like favorite Dylan, changes with the day; there is too much brilliance across too many records to firmly settle on one eternal favorite. It is, however, the best Destroyer record: consistent, nuanced, equal parts enervating and energizing. The record sounds effortless, as if these songs were always there, hovering unseen, waiting to be plucked out of the air and given form by Bejar and his murderous band of Vancouverites. Even after twenty years, I would not change a second. This is as close to perfect as rock records get.
Even more remarkable is that Bejar was just getting started. Five years after Rubies, he exploded the concept of what Destroyer could be with Kaputt, another one of this century’s finest records. The next in a long series of stylistic shifts for Bejar, Kaputt’s smooth studio rock accidentally intersected with the indie rock zeitgeist circa 2011. The album became a touchstone of the era, launching Bejar to levels of (relative) stardom he had never anticipated and didn’t necessarily want. Naturally, he followed his big break with Five Spanish Songs, a brief EP that hit the brakes on Destroyer’s industry momentum by delivering exactly what its title promised. “The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable,” Bejar announced in the accompanying press release. “It felt over for English. Good for business transactions, but that’s about it.”
Fortunately for us all, Bejar and the English language soon made up. For the last decade, he has turned out immaculate, adventurous Destroyer LPs with all the regularity of a production line: the bravado Poison Season, the spare, sublime ken, the icy pandemic-era bookends Have We Met and Labyrinthitis. Last year, Bejar inaugurated a whole new era with Dan’s Boogie, a tidy record that managed to reconcile the many previous iterations of Destroyer while simultaneously pointing towards undiscovered territory.
There has never been a better time to be in the business of Dan Bejar, a statement as true today as it was twenty years ago, the day Rubies was released. As you’ll read in the following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, the album was a hinge point in the history of Destroyer. Things were one way before, and they were another way after—simple as.
A disclaimer: this piece was initially envisioned as a personal retrospective of Rubies on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, supplemented by a few choice thoughts from Bejar. I shot him an interview request, he graciously accepted, and we caught up shortly after the conclusion of Destroyer’s most recent European tour. I had a few nebulous concepts going in, and I drafted a sequence of questions designed to prod the conversation in those general directions. With any luck, Dan’s thoughts would align with mine, and I would get a couple solid quotes to deploy throughout my write up. As we started speaking, it quickly became apparent that the interview wasn’t a supplement to the piece. It was the piece.
Making great art and discussing great art are distinct skills. To the extent that a person is talented at one, they are typically untalented at the other—that’s why artists are artists and critics are critics. Bejar is the rarest of breeds: someone equally adept at both. When dealing with such a man, it’s best to simply get out of his way. Anything I might add would only be a distraction.
Even as humble interlocutor, I’m proud to be a part of this number.
