Dan Bejar squats in the middle of the stage, staring at the floor in concentration. His shirt is open and his hair is tousled. All around him is a deafening soundscape, feedback loops, guitar noise, funky drums, a distorted trumpet. At some point the sound clears and Bejar straightens up, makes a small movement, a mixture of curtsy and bow, which means: Now the song is over.
destroyer is the triumphant last act of the ROLLING STONE night, which takes place on Thursday as part of the Reeperbahn Festival in the Grünspan. The band around Dan Bejar has long been one of the editors’ favorite bands. Because of their uncompromising nature, their willingness to experiment, their ever-changing (but always appealing) sound. In 2022, and with their thirteenth album “Labyrinthitis”, this sound is shaped by electric drones, by complex noise constructions that are broken up by hard beats. From funky bass lines. And Bejar’s hoarse, characterful voice, his mixture of speaking and singing.
Destroyers don’t want to be accessible
They bring these qualities to the stage and are an illustrious group at the same time: the bass player wearing a suit and sunglasses, who moves in moonwalks and whose bass is much too loud, but really a lot of is too loud in the mix (and therefore kind of just right). Or the noisy guitarist who only turns to his amp for the entire duration of the concert – except when he grabs a cowbell and bangs it as if it had insulted his mother. Or the trumpeter, who at one point gets a roughly five-minute solo interlude in which he filters and alienates his instrument, creating an amazingly spherical sound. It becomes clear: Bejar and his gang have absolutely no interest in being accessible. They make the music they make. But they are never bulky or pretentious for no reason. And Bejar, who is very reserved, seems genuinely happy when the applause is a little bigger. “Thanks, that was ‘Cue Synthesizer’,” he says, for example.
Ring in the evening Lola Marsh from Tel Aviv. With this indie pop band, on the other hand, accessibility is part of the concept. Singer Yael Shoshana Cohen dances across the stage, actually laughs the whole time, and stares at individual people in the audience – it’s always a bit of coming and going at concerts like this – nodding to newcomers and waving when someone leaves. She encourages the audience to clap and dance and once even to a small dance class choreography in which everyone takes a step to the side. Dan Bejar didn’t do that.
Relaxed chemistry
It certainly doesn’t do the band an injustice to point out that their tracks are all quite similar, having a consistent friendly indie pop energy. Cohen and bandmate Gil Landau have a laid-back chemistry, joking around, giving each other hi-fives that go comically off the mark. They seem genuinely touched by the warm applause, Cohen is beaming from ear to ear.
After you: Skinny Lister, a folk-punk band that takes verdigris by its name and turns the place into an Irish pub. The singer climbs over the barrier at one point and hops into the crowd, dancing merrily, having a man carry her on her shoulders and being her own band’s biggest fan. The band’s urgency and pressure is dramatic: “Kathy, you got me on my knees,” they sing. The accordion has rarely been played with so much passion. “Tomorrow is our day off,” she says, “is it dangerous for us to be in Hamburg today?” Let’s put it this way: That will be the subject of the next anthem in the Irish Pub.