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Aug 27, 2015Nearly 20 years on, Destroyer is still as surprising and inspired as ever.
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Aug 27, 2015It's easy listening, while thankfully having nothing whatsoever to do with the much-maligned genre of the same name--and the sort of fascinatingly layered album that appears demanding and austere from the outset but is in fact home to a set of beautifully realised songs.
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Aug 24, 2015Poison Season is beautiful, haunting, thrilling, but inherently challenging, as Bejar challenges himself and his listeners equally.
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Aug 28, 2015It’s novelistic. It’s smart. Of course it is, it’s a Destroyer album.
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Aug 28, 2015There’s enough allure in Poison Season’s oddities to make it highly listenable.
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Aug 31, 2015It’s the kind of album you can listen to many times without wearing it out, without even getting much of a grip on why you like it.
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Aug 28, 2015His follow-up is his most adventurous collection yet. Over 13 tracks, he unspools anthemic power chords, swaggering horns, and gimlet-eyed tales of his journeys around the world.
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Aug 26, 2015Collaboration clearly suits Destroyer well: after ten albums in close to two decades, the band still sound as vital and inventive as ever, and they're operating at the top of their game on Poison Season.
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MojoAug 6, 2015There's nothing bland about this fervid, ideasy album. [Sep 2015, p.90]
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Aug 25, 2015Poison Season is another excellent Destroyer album, packed with songs that are graceful, beautiful and, yes, hummable.
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Aug 7, 2015Bejar’s dismantled the old Destroyer sound, but he’s built something wonderfully disorientating in its stead.
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Aug 24, 2015It’s a surprise to see him employ such an economy of language, but Bejar can still command your attention with his sharp, romantic one-liners. He’s setting the scene by making a visceral impression with characters that feel alive, engulfed in their indecisiveness, driven with a theatrical imagination that’s as restless as it’s ever been.
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Aug 26, 2015While there's still mystery and misdirection on his new album, Poison Season is nakedly ambitious and utterly satisfying.
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Sep 3, 2015On Poison Season, you can occasionally detect the dismaying sound of indie rock's greatest intellect second-guessing itself.
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Aug 6, 2015Poison Season is a caustic, beguiling masterpiece.
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Q MagazineAug 25, 2015Poison Season sounds like a restless musical intellect stretching out with new confidence. [Oct 2015, p.106]
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Aug 17, 2015On his 11th album, that gloss is pared down, revealing just how well-crafted and intricate Bejar’s songs have become.
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Aug 28, 2015Bejar stacks rainy-New York sax magic, sad-astronaut strings and hippie jazzbo grooving to make songs that are as wryly hilarious as they are weirdly affecting.
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Aug 24, 2015What makes Poison Season a great album, though, is that it doesn't completely wallow in Bejar's newfound smoking-jacket-and-fine-brandy sophistication—as opposed to the tattered-plaid-shirt-and-fifth-of-Jack wildness of early Destroyer. Rather, refined balladry like "Solace's Bride" coexists comfortably next to upbeat, funky songs like "Midnight Meet the Rain," which sounds like the badass theme song for an '80s cop show.
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Aug 24, 2015One of the best albums from a restless artist who understands the ridiculousness of being a Restless Artist, but trusts that a consistent voice will make sense of his cross-genre meanderings.
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Aug 28, 2015Poison Season is the sound of an artist in complete control of the strange chaos around him.
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Aug 28, 2015Whether Poison Season is approached as an exhibition of those many individual pieces, or as an ensemble affair weaved subconsciously together, that conflicted point of view leads the listener to treat the whole LP as an exploration.
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Sep 9, 2015Poison Season is a luxurious creation, dappled in sunlight, and summoning all the redemptive power of pop.
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Aug 31, 2015Poison Season is nothing if not willing to shrug off a few of Destroyer’s newest fans if that means staying true to what the band has done so well for the better part of two decades. More so than on Kaputt, all of the classic Destroyer motifs are on full display.
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UncutAug 6, 2015This Zen archer lets fly with his second straight bulls-eye. [Sep 2015, p.79]
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Aug 6, 2015It's not bad, and it certainly has its moments. But on the heels of Kaputt, it can be a frustrating, uneven listen. [Aug-Sep 2015, p.61]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 59 out of 67
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Mixed: 3 out of 67
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Negative: 5 out of 67
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Sep 1, 2015
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Aug 28, 2015
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Sep 29, 2015