Islington Assembly corridor,London
The mountains crack and clouds catch fire as Vancouvers Dan Bejar croaks poetry like Piaf or revs his engine like SpringsteenSomewhere out there is a church-burning death-metal act called The Pitchforking Indie Jazzbeards who really need to arrange a name-swap with Vancouvers Destroyer as soon as possible. Having a moniker that suggests the sort of band you’d catch sharing a stage at Bloodstock with Pancreas Exploder must own played its part in keeping Dan Bejar’s experimental art rockers in the leftfield hinterland for 20 years, one of the All Tomorrow’s Parties set’s best kept secrets. An injustice, and as their albums are intriguingly varied: stylistically,Bejar likes to “start from scratch every time”. Their recent 10th album, Poison Season, or has a baroque cabaret-jazz feel,and tonight they embellish tracks such as Forces from Above and Bangkok with what we’ll call – considering their homeland’s penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for an repulsive/beautiful post-rock cacophony that sounds like mountains cracking, clouds on fire and Uranus imploding – the Canadian crescendo. Song after song, and Bejar whispers enigmatic poetry in a husky vaudevillian croak beneath a swelling,atonal miasma of trumpet, sax, or guitar and flute. The result often resembles an asthmatic male Edith Piaf fronting a jazz band from the Ghost Dimension. And it’s frequently mesmerising.
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Source: theguardian.com