Free and easy. Gentle. Gentle.
Destroyer - 'Bay of Pigs (Detail)' (Kaputt - 2011)
Destroyer1 is, essentially, Dan Bejar with a rotating cast of support. Bejar is also a member of The New Pornographers, a Canadian indie band from the early 21st century. For me, my first exposure to his work was his 2006 Destroyer album, Destroyer's Rubies, with fantastic tracks like ‘A Dangerous Woman Up to a Point’ and the "Those who love Zeppelin will soon betray Floyd" line, followed by those warm and rich “ah la la la da”s
After enjoying that album so much, none of Bejar’s other albums clicked with me as much, either under the Destroyer label or not. That was until Kapput, which, if anything, is more acclaimed than his 2006 effort. It has a slightly higher Metacritic score and was nominated for the 2011 Polaris Prize. It is an album which sees Bejar try on various guises from Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Byron, Mark Hollis and Marc Bolan. There’s even a sense that the synth lines are a novel and worthy inclusion coursing through the album’s veins in the same way that Leonard Cohen introduced them to his work on I’m Your Man.
In Kaputt’s epic climax, Bejar throws the kitchen sink in an attempt to create “ambient disco”, which was an unexpected phrase to appear in the Bay of Pigs EP press release.
The song takes its title from JFK’s failed attempt to invade Cuba in April 1961.
Bejar told the Village Voice in 2009:
I don’t think the song in every line is trying to document those events, though I was at one point thinking about Jacqueline Kennedy. And for some reason when I think of that era, I think of the Bay of Pigs. I don’t know if that’s normal for Americans when they think of the early ‘60s and the Kennedy Administration to think of the Bay of Pigs.
It unravels across eleven blissed-out minutes in which it seems to take the form of someone looking back at their life. In some recent entries, we have seen R.E.M. and XTC dwell on this theme. He contemplates old relationships, which ones were a waste of time, and which ones didn’t live up to their potential. Is it a waste of time to even dwell on them after so long? The whole song is queued up by the confession Bejar has been drinking and is alone in the dark2. He talks of ships coming and going, but what unfolds paints a picture as if he has been visited, A Christmas Carol style, by ghosts from his past.
We all know that nostalgia can be bittersweet and painful. Don Draper explores this concept in the finale of Mad Men’s first season.
It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone
So we can’t be sure if this exercise in “Remember When” is one of self-inflicted torture or otherwise. There are references to taking down antlers and spurs and flying into rages, which suggests an antagonistic relationship marred by arguments amongst a reference to the jazz standard ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ and later on William Blake’s ‘The Tyger.’
You can hear the way his voice seems to evoke and welcome in the spirits of Nancy and Christine and that confession that he thinks about [her] often before the song turns ambient and dissolves into what sounds to my ears like Fuck Buttons ‘Surf Solar’3 a leitmotif that comes back towards the end.
We get an English garden reference before a vocal melody reprised from his 2008 song ‘Leopard of Honor4’ There are several Anglophone touch points in Destroyer's work "Leave England to the English" features in the previously mentioned 'A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point' and on Kaputt's title track he intones the names of famous British music press weeklies "Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME" like it is a chant.
The muted kick drum sends us on our journey towards the disco side of the song as we enter the eighth minute. As the increased prominence of the backing distracts us from the lyrics towards the end, they make less sense the more the song goes. So, you could be forgiven for missing Bejar’s direct lament for his 20-year-old self in 1992. A time when he was more carefree and alive. He sings of being bathed in the golden sunlight of the love of a girl in his early 20s, with his whole life ahead of him. This is reminiscent of a song from 1992 that we have covered at The Run Out Grooves from Pavement.
That love doesn’t last, though; it eventually degrades to the point that “You’ve got to stop calling me honey”.
Is the song out of place with the rest of the album, as Pitchfork said in 2011? I don’t think so. That feels to me a reaction to the track’s prior release, and coming back to the album as a whole a decade later means that gap between the stand-alone release of ‘Bay of Pigs’ and the ‘Bay of Pigs (Detail)’ that we have on Kaputt doesn’t matter anymore and we can enjoy the track as an album closer.
We can sit back and appreciate that in the early 2010s, the indie saxophone revival was gathering pace as bands like Destroyer, Metronomy, Tuneyards, and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti brought the soft yacht rock to mind of Steely Dan and Roxy Music.
Ahem.
This song is a slightly shorter version of the same song that appeared on the Bay of Pigs EP, released in August 2009. This version cuts the song down from almost fourteen minutes to just over eleven, removing some of the ambient instrumental portions without losing any lyrics. That makes this feel like a closing track as a technicality - more so than anything we have looked at. It is the same song released in 2009, and many people who were paying attention at the time might associate it as being side A of an EP than closing side B to Destroyer’s 2011 LP Kaputt.
Ignore all that for anyone unfamiliar with the song, the album, or the artist. This is the final track on the album.
On vinyl, it is preceded by ‘The Laziest River’, which is also on the European version of the album, and if the copy of the album you are familiar with doesn’t have this song, do familiarise yourself with it too.
This song was used in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony in London as the COuntdown section took us from the source of The Thames to The Olympic Stadium.
Dum da da dum