By: Jeff Hassay & Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

Entering stage with a quaff of madman-meets T Rex- meets young Einstein hair, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar Dan Bejar (known as Destroyer) boiled down his complex song mazes to rarefied folk gems. Possibly every review dealing with Bejar’s music succumbs to the obligatory reference to David Bowie and Pavement. We shall restrain ourselves from falling into that trap--other than to mention that it was a rare treat to hear such thickly layered songs like European Oils and Bad Arts, which work so well as jangly post-glam freakouts, reborn in an unplugged setting.  

For someone who sings so much about art and is constantly self-reflexive (mentioning himself in songs as well as referencing other songs and albums in songs) it made sense that Bejar made the bold move of removing the safety net of his band and exposed himself as the ADD poet that he clearly is. Anyone can hide behind a din of backing vocals and electric guitars. Bejar had only his hair and circumnavigating lyrics to protect him from the world.

Not that he really needed protection, the audience was his from the get go, perhaps hoping that light would be shed on the re-thinking of these songs so many of which stand as beacons of current, interesting and actually groundbreaking directions for Rock and Roll (Streets of Fire and Crystal Country are classics whose time will come). While so many of his contemporaries waddle in the mud of past glories (Malkmus, Bowie), or just sound plain derivative (every other member of The New Pornographers), Bejar forges ahead into strange terrain with that possessed look in his eye like the subject of one of his songs: Fitzcarraldo. His distinctive syncopated poetry and blitzkrieg imagery was delivered in bursts and yelps of fevered urgency. He seemed to lose himself blissfully in the depths of each song, committing to its vision in a way that made bizarre metaphors and unlikely symbols real and palpable. For an evening he was the shaman who came down from the hilltop to tell his tales, not amidst thunder and lightning, but with calm and precision.  Plus he hit all the high notes (not an easy task for such demanding songs.

One new song was debuted; Downtown, a mid-tempo rocker that wouldn’t seem out of place on Bejar’s watershed album Streethawk: A Seduction. Sadly, Foam Hands and Streets of Fire were missing but the show’s closer, (Swan Lake’s) The Freedom was a beautiful surprise. With its repeating chorus “The freedom, to be alone with the freedom, the freedom, to be alone with the freedom…” and the two or three ways that one could read into those lines, it was the perfect way to end the show, with one man alone on stage, singing about being alone singing. Meanwhile, a live video projection cast an enlarged image of Bejar singing on the wall behind him, doubling and quadrupling his singular presence like a hall of mirrors that visualized the looping self-reflections of which he sang.