Ideas For Songs came together in 1997, after Canadian label Granted Passage asked Dan Bejar to contribute a song or two for a cassette compilation; instead of sending just one, Bejar shot off 20-some home recordings, figuring they'd do the choosing for him. They didn't, and this release, originally on cassette and now re-mastered and re-issued digitally and on vinyl, was born. Largely comprised of little more than single-or-double tracked acoustic guitar and Bejar's vocals, the sound of Ideas For Songs isn't so much lo-fi as low-rent. The occasional adornment-- wheezy keyboards, a bit of lead guitar-- lends the set a certain amateurishness, but Bejar's vocals aren't shy in the mix, and there's a clarity to every sound, however shambolic their arrangement. Though there are fewer chords and leaps between sections than, say, Rubies, you can hear the shuffling grandiosity of some of Bejar's better-realized later compositions coming together here.
Despite a few hints of Bejar's rickety indie-rock idols, his early music still feels somewhat unprecedented, due largely to his emergent vocal style. Even on these early recordings, his distinctive, sometimes divisive rasp carries much of its current impact, and, as on the spacious Kaputt, it's especially striking over this stripped-down setting. This meta-songcraft and wizened imagery, though still coming together on Ideas, feels much more akin to his later work than the same era's murkier, more experimental We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge.
The set begins with a classic Bejar turnaround; over descending strums, he describes "a boring nation at war with itself, but not really at war with itself" and "a giant among smaller giants." His fondness for the disarming images and direct address is all over Ideas; there's the "afterbirth too red to mention" in "Forget America", and he closes "Songs About a Girl Up to a Point" with the bracing "my dear, fuck you and fuck August." Now as then, these sharply rendered left-field ruminations are the things Destroyer songs are made of, and Ideas is often withering, full of keenly observed, uniquely Bejarian takedowns. It has more than a few references that seem to find Bejar grappling with getting his lyrical ideas into the music; "I couldn't find the words and then I found the words," he repeats throughout the unusually catchy "Untitled", and the grammar-policing "Marrying the Hammer" ends with a bit about the "divorcing the chords to marry the hammer." As inscrutable as Bejar's words can seem, it seems pretty clear that he's talking process here, about getting the two halves-- the ideas and the songs themselves-- to agree with one another. Matched up to Ideas' threadbare arrangements, his knotty lyrics untangle more easily.
Ideas' best tune is probably its last, "Why Banacek Doesn't Love", which moves calmly and confidently back and forth between verse and chorus. Its refrain-- "I'm seceding from a love I don't believe of"-- is his strongest to that point. But the key lines on "Banacek" come earlier, when Bejar sings of "a string of broken entries" and castigates someone for "quoting and stealing and quoting" and so on. Bejar naysayers often go after his overly allusive lyrics and his too-reverent genre dabbling, but here, while still carving out a musical identity of his own, he digs into himself, operating almost outside of influence, laying much of the groundwork for what would become his inimitable style. Ideas For Songs may be a glorified demo, but rarely do early sketches feel this well-rendered, and however unintended its release as a full-length, this is a vital document in Destroyer's development. Next to later compositional triumphs like Streethawk: A Seduction or Kaputt, the musical side of these Ideas For Songs may leave a little to be desired. But Destroyer has long been about getting as many smart, startling lines into the music as possible, and all that starts here.
