A Quick Portrait of the Ironist

an artist i really enjoy

Every time I’ve been in a serious relationship, I’ve tried to get my significant other into the music of Destroyer, a songwriter I feel is one of the greatest of our young century, the only real spiritual successor to Bob Dylan. Every time, this has failed. After a decade of such failure, I’ve started to wonder why. 

Sure, there’s some obvious stuff. Destroyer, aka Dan Bejar, does not have the most straightforwardly appealing voice. While he has a talent for hooks that he deploys reluctantly, his melodies can be meandering. And his latest albums have an acoustic fondness for the 70s and 80s that could strike you as kitschy.

But I think the more substantial thing is that Destroyer’s persona, in the music, can be annoying. However, it’s a persona that I find moving and relatable. It’s a character I thought I’d inhabit, for moments of my life, managing to maintain his sulking condition for a season or two. It is the character of a certain kind of Ironist. Maybe I can explain that character.

The Ironist is someone who is uncomfortable with the present moment. He is standing off to the side, at a social function, wondering how he came to be among such pretentious douchebags. He is always looking backward, at something that was better, truer, in the mist. “Once I was made beautiful in the light of an hour, but this year I’m just a meal laid out for August to devour.” This reminiscence doesn’t quite make him happy. He can’t get halfway through a pleasant memory before emphasizing its torturous distance. “It was a good year, it was a very good year—and now it’s gone.” His favorite hobby is mumbling into the breeze, re-adjudicating previous disputes and loves, shifting them this way and that, until they are tilted and fractured, far beyond any possible clarity. “I couldn’t stand a chance, I couldn’t stand at all, you looked okay with the others, you looked great on your own. It was 2002, and you couldn’t be bothered to say hello, or goodbye.”