By Blake Morneau
A converted movie theatre venue space in Victoria, BC set the scene for a low-key, intimate acoustic showcase for Dan Bejar, better known as Destroyer. With support from his friend, longtime collaborating partner and fellow top-flight songwriter Carey Mercer, performing as Blackout Beach, Destroyer gave the attentive audience a glimpse into the skeleton structure that lies underneath the often immense, sculpted production that defines his records.
Mercer was up to the challenge of opening for such a beloved songwriter as Bejar. Performing his Blackout Beach songs with the help of a beat pedal (“Don’t Give Up Your Dreams” featured a support performance from the “ROCK 8” setting), Mercer was captivating. His guitar playing shifted effortlessly from clean and beautiful, to amplified and crushing, bringing peaks and valleys of sound and space throughout his set (inspiring a smattering of people to pull out the old lighters). His stage banter between songs was just as winning, bringing laughs at a pretty regular pace and even having his mom on stage to give away a magical looking pair of red and black shoes she had found for Mercer that he was clearly not a fan of. Fine, I’ll admit it: I’m jealous of the man who claimed those shoes.
Opening with heart-wrenching performances of “My Favorite Year” (from Trouble In Dreams) and “Your Blood” (from Rubies), Destroyer set the tone early. Armed with nothing more than his red acoustic guitar, his set was to be a showcase for the man’s otherworldly lyrics as much as anything. Strumming most songs with just his thumb, Bejar kept the energy low throughout the set, allowing the songs room to breathe. The brief moments that his strumming did get heavier became all the more affecting, thanks to the restraint displayed during the rest of the set.
Over halfway through his career-spanning set, Bejar pointed out what we were all thinking and said, “I guess all of the songs I know on solo acoustic guitar are downers. I don’t think I’m giving the proper impression of what Destroyer is all about.” No one in the crowd seemed to mind. A Destroyer show is often a disorienting, brain-melting affair, full of walls of sound that often overwhelm Bejar’s poetic, thoughtful lyrics. But here on an empty stage, those lyrics were given a lovely amount of room and were delivered with the delicate power they deserve.
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