City of Daughters

Originally released in 1998 (and reissued on Merge in 2010), City of Daughters was Dan Bejar's first foray into Destroyer mode. While it may lack the apocalyptic Ziggy Stardust panache of Streethawk: A Seduction (or to a lesser extent, Thief), it provides a wide open window to the artist's metamorphosis from bedroom bard to Dadaist-indie poet laureate. Without all of the signature Destroyer flourishes ("lie lies" "la las" and choice "guitarmonies") Bejar's clever wordplay feels even more surreal (tracks like "I Want This Cyclops" and "You Were so Cruel" point a longer finger at Syd Barrett than they do David Bowie). Like all Destroyer records, it requires more than a couple of spins to draw you in, but it rewards that patience with an endlessly inventive collection of serpentine melodies peppered with the kind of darkly funny, stream-of-consciousness refrigerator poetry that has come to define Bejar's nom de plume, and while there are a handful of cuts like "No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against the State of Our Love, Baby)", "School and the Girls Who Go There," and "Space Race" that lay the foundation for future recordings, City of Daughters is a stark town populated with hopeless eccentrics, which is probably just how Bejar likes it. ~ James Christopher Monger