Photo by Mckenzie Gerber

Dan Bejar is often mistakenly referred to as Destroyer, as if it were merely a moniker for a solo project, much like Mike Kinsella’s Owen or Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine. But unlike those artists, Bejar has always insisted that Destroyer is a full-on band, albeit with a constantly shifting lineup of collaborators over the years. His sentiment came to a head during Tuesday’s concert at Lincoln Hall, a unified sonic tapestry that saw Bejar and his bandmates (many who have played on the last three albums) seamlessly blending their skills to recreate the coke rock dreamscape found on his latest outing, the fantastic Kaputt.

The key to the album’s success (and the live renditions of its songs) is that Bejar and company play their spaced out, soft jazz-infused tunes without a hint of irony or experimentation. There was no cracking of a wise-ass smile, no wink to let the audience in on some nonexistent adult contemporary joke. The music is simply how Bejar envisioned it when it was written, unabashedly dripping in woozy elevator flute, cloying beats, and cavernous horns. It creates a consistently enchanting sonic tone, and mixed with his rambling lyrics of obtuse doomed romance and chic nightlife gone sour, becomes something wholly unique, especially when performed live. His non-Kaputt tracks were a testament to the sincerity of this new found sound, with the baroque acoustics of Your Blues gem “It’s Gonna Take an Airplane” and Destroyer’s Rubies cuts “3,000 Flowers” and “Painter In Your Pocket” all given an ethereal late 70′s reworking, newly glamorized with hazy horn riffs and synthesizer jubilation.

Being a man of few words, Bejar rarely spoke, instead getting lost in the soft disco swirl, closing his eyes and swaying to the streetwalking strums of opener “Chinatown” and the brassy female backing vocals on “Blue Eyes”. He simply said “thank you” during the pin drop silence between each song, sometimes pulling out a lyrics sheet during his more verbally cumbersome phrases. The device ended up adding to the lucid atmosphere, his eyes squinting to read his scatological sentences, as if he were a poet too intoxicated to remember his own words (which may have been the case), but passionate enough to deliver them with half-snarled fervor and clear-eyed precision.

Much of the night saw Bejar smoothly ducking and meandering around the stage to let his band do the talking. In fact, the main center of attention seemed to be his charismatic saxophonist/flautist, a small, bespectacled musician who huffed and puffed his smooth liqueur improvised riffs with Jericho-worthy gusto,  clamping his eyes and sweatily rearing back his head as he belted his way through Kaputt centerpiece “Suicide Demo For Kara Walker” and epic closer “Bay of Pigs (Detail)”. The fact that a deceptively non-verbal, seemingly backup musician was able to grace the limelight with such unhinged showmanship hints that Destroyer might now be unanimously considered what Bejar has intended all along: an actual band.

Setlist:
Chinatown
Blue Eyes
It’s Gonna Take An Airplane
Downtown
Savage Night at the Opera
Kaputt
3,000 Flowers
Painter In Your Pocket
Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
Song For America
Encore:
Bay of Pigs