The unfortunate task of following M. Ward's excellent performance on the fourth night of XX Merge at the Cat's Cradle fell to Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer. He delivered an nice solo set accented by his unique singing style. The set included music from his various Destroyer albums. The song "Streets of Fire" stood out in the set. He recorded it for the 1996 Destroyer album We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge and he recorded it again with The New Pornographers in 2005.Bejar said that he offered a cab driver $100 if he could get him to the Cat's Cradle on Friday in time for ten minutes of Polvo's set, but he didn't make it. His charming banter with the crowd and excellent performance kept the crowd happy throughout the set. Check out the set list below and a video of the performance of "Painter in Your Pocket" here.
Destroyer set list:
Helena
Your Blood
What Road
European Oils
Goddess of Drought
To The Heart Of The Sun On The Back Of The Vulture, I'll Go
Streets of Fire
Foam Hands
The Chosen Few
Painter in Your Pocket
The unlikely closer for the night was the Los Angeles band Imperial Teen. While they may not have been the logical closer, they delivered a great set of catchy, danceable pop tunes. Guitarist and singer Will Schwartz seemed overwhelmed by the crowd's enthusiastic reaction to the set which included such hits as "Shim Sham," Yoo Hoo" and "Million $ Man."
The band were brought back out for an encore by rowdy cheers and applause and took a request for their final song, "Butch." Roddy Bottum got some help with the first line of the song from some fans in the audience and once he did, they rocked through the song and closed out the night.
It was the only night at the Cradle where we out before 2 AM. After such a hardcore week, it was nice to get home a little earlier though. Check out Imperial Teen's setlist below.
Imperial Teen set list:
Ivanka
Do It Better
You're One
Shim Sham
(new song)
Lipstick
Baby and the Band
Yoo Hoo
Waterboy
Million $ Man
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Butch
Check out photos of Destroyer and Imperial Teen below. Coverage of the final night at Memorial Hall is coming later today.
[all photos by Kevin Norris]
Destroyer
Imperial Teen
2 comments:
I remember getting a copy of Imperial Teen's album Seasick when I was in college. I practically wore out the CD! Butch was a great choice for an encore.
In between Helena and What Road Destroyer played "Your Blues."
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