Everything Happens When Nobody's There

I'm happy to report that Saturday's Destroyer show Lee's Palace exceeded all expectations. Over the dozen or so times I've seen the band, it has been kind of a hit and miss affair ranging between ecstatically amazing and awkwardly painful. The new band, though, is easily the best that they've yet put together and Dan Bejar seemed, for the first time, relatively comfortable with his place as rock and roll frontman. There was none of the distance between singer and audience that he sometimes seems to erect over the course of the show, and even the non-Destroyer fans I went with were duly impressed. Overall, I fully agree with the Zoilus interpretation of events, so I recommend that you go read them. And, to my great surprise, I actually really liked Magnolia Electric Co. which was kind of a nice bonus.

Cub - Nicolas Bragg
I think we've posted enough Destroyer songs here in the past few months that you get point. So, instead, I'll post this awesomely catchy Cub song (is there any other kind?) as a tribute to the Destroyer backup band, particularly guitarist Nicolas Bragg who I'm pretty sure is the namesake of the song. If you want an actually good Destroyer post, go check out Dan at Said the Gramophone's video rendition of European Oils. As is the tendency at STG, he's putting all of us MP3 bloggers to shame.
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Magnolia Electric Co. - Even the Dark Don't Hide It
This song is the equivalent of comfort food: it's an indie rock ice cream cone, a classic rock poutine. It's not breaking any exciting musical barriers or encouraging you to go out and start a band, but it's also free of all taint of badness - or, if you want, filled with all taint of goodness (but not in a gross way). Everything that you want in a crunchy, guitar driven country rock song is here in abundance, but never excessively so. Or, put more succinctly, I'll probably listen to this song alone more than I'll ever listen to all of the Animal Collective songs put together.
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