Destroyer's Dan Bejar talks '70s cinema and 'Poison Season'

? In 2011, Dan Bejar found himself with an unusual level of fame for an artist nine albums into his career. The Vancouver-based singer-songwriter had just released Kaputt under his Destroyer moniker. The record was a critical and commercial success, due in part to its ability to revive '80s dance tropes without succumbing to tawdry nostalgia.
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? With his latest album, Poison Season (Merge Records), Bejar distances himself from Kaputt's processed grooves. From the delicate opening track, “Times Square, Poison Season 1,” the record coats itself in lush string arrangements and slow-burning ballads. Bejar spoke about the influence of '70s cinema on Poison Season, the strengths of his new band, and embracing a balance of romance and melancholy.
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? The orchestral style of Poison Season is in direct contrasts with Kaputt. Was that intentional?
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? I'm not a very conscious writer. I would say at that level, probably not, but I think that when I sat and stared at the songs I could sense they were gonna be something quite different in a way that they seem more classic sounding to me, kind of darker and more traditional in some sense. When I toured Kaputt in 2012, I put together a band, the sound of which I got very attached to. It's not a band that lends itself to computer processing and control, and editing. It's a band that lends itself to eight people getting in a room and making a bunch of noise together. I thought the record should reflect that. We tried to get the highest fidelity sounding room that we could all cram ourselves into and play the songs, which is the exact opposite of the way Kaputt went down.
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? Why emulate the sound of your full band?
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? Because I think it's the best band I've ever played with. To me Poison Season sounds like everything I love thrown at the canvas at once. I'm not sure that's a sure-fire recipe for art making, but that's what I wanted to do.
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? Does Poison Season refer to anything specifically, or did you just like the way it sounded?
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? I thought the words sounded kind of cool together, like a bad translation, or a bad rhyme. I thought it sounded like a downer and I wanted the record to sound that way. Not in a miserable sense, but having a lost, bitter quality, one that I think is still romantic. I thought Poison Season had some of those connotations.
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?How did the delicate strings and dance grooves come together for “Forces From Above?”
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? That song is like the ultimate mashup. I had a disco salsa vision for the album, which I kind of abandoned because I realized I hadn't written 12 disco salsa songs. “Forces From Above” was less disco-y and more gritty and frenetic, but still with this messed up Latin feel, but the arrangements that got written for the songs were much more baroque sounding, which was weird in a way I really liked. Two things I had in my head from the early days were driving percussive sounds, and large-scale orchestral romantic sounds. That's a recipe for '70s cinema, which was something I was thinking about a lot.
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? Did you have any movies in mind for this record?
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? I was always see this album somehow linked to movies like 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita that are quite lush and wide-scale, but mostly because of moments of personal crisis in a world of decay. I also love Nino Rota. There's a certain style of '70s soundtrack that I really like. That grand and melancholic soundtrack to Watership Down, or a movie like Taxi Driver where there's relentless images and the music is along for the ride.
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? Was the movie Chinatown an influence?
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? I feel that Poison Season and Chinatown are very much linked. It's a movie I watched a couple times during the making of the record. There's a certain style of film about America made by extremely European people that I find interesting. It's kind of a skewed and strangely beautiful but menacing take on the states.
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? What is it about that '70s romance and melancholy appeals to you?
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? I'm not exactly sure, but it's something I go back to all my adult life. That's the decade I grew up in as a kid. There's just certain moods that grab me and I keep going back to them. I like romance, and not even like couples romance, but the romance of large gestures, and sad melodies as well, or even pleasant melancholia. Rainy day shit is always where my hands go on the guitar or the piano. Those are just the phrases I like to sing.
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?Destroyer plays the Loft with Jennifer Castle on Fri., Oct. 9. $18. 9 p.m. 1374 W. Peachtree St. N.W. 404-885-1365.