A lot of people think of Destroyer as just you, but you’re pretty insistent it’s actually a full band, right?
I think it’s important that people know that musically, when it comes time to record a record or play live, it’s a collaboration. There’s eight records, and there’s no one who’s played on more than three or four of them, aside from myself, but if people scan the credits on the last few albums, they’re gonna see a lot of overlapping names. It’s a pool of people that’s pretty constant, in slightly different configurations. And live, we’re five. So it’s a full band—a pretty loud band, actually.
Do you play requests?
We have a list of stuff that we do. We try to stick to the songs that the people on tour played on, so it’s mostly songs from the new record, quite a few from This Night and a couple from Rubies and from Your Blues. There’s a lot of songs that we’ve never tried to play, recorded by lineups that were completely different, so chances are we’re not gonna go and hack away and do a disastrous version of one of those songs. But then there are songs that we kinda know but haven’t played too much on tour, where if someone really wanted to hear it we might give it a go.
Given how lyric-driven your songs tend to be, is it challenging to make them as effective in a loud, live setting as on an album?
When we play live I generally feel it’s way more important that you can hear the momentum of the band and the sonic quality of the stage than be able to discern every single word I’m saying. I’d rather just make a bunch of furious noise and get really into the music. And then there’s some quieter songs that are more vocally driven. But it’s definitely different from the recorded albums that way. On record, the lyrics are definitely pushed to the fore constantly, but when we play live it’s way more visceral. Not that language can’t be visceral, but at the end of the day it can’t really compete with a drum having the shit smashed out of it.
With Devon Williams. Dopamine Flux. May 17, 10 p.m., $10. Beauty Bar, 598-1965.