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Album Details

• Artist: Destroyer
• Album: Notorious Lightning and Other Works
• Label: Merge
• Year of Release: 2005
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: bbuckingham on 2005-04-13

Notorious Lightning is a pleasant curio, especially for those who found last year's Your Blues a little too sparse and icy, what with all the spiky midi synths and odd choir patches. Bejar's best release since Streethawk: A Seduction, Notorious Lightning finds Bejar reinterpreting 6 songs from Your Blues with Frog Eyes as his backing band, a scenario that played itself out during a joint tour last summer.

And what a glorious racket it is. Where "Your Blues" paired Bejar's sublime lyrics with bombastic synthesized symphonies, Notorious Lightning is a shambling, torqued guitar fest, with the odd keyboard part and some patented yelps and coos from Frog Eyes guitarist/singer Carey Mercer. The title track finds Bejar in top form, his strained vocals and elongated delivery pushes the song to dizzying heights.

Bejar's songs have always benefited from the ebb and flow of a visceral rock band, albeit one that has more in common with Television Personalities and David Bowie than your standard classic fair. Punchy guitars and a trashy rhythm section does such more for these songs than the Prefab Sprout-isms that characterized the Your Blues arrangements. Although kudos to Bejar for never staying the course.

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