Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
Handel: Keyboard Music, Suites 3, 13, 11, 14, 15, & 8
Falcon & Friends Ultimate Dance Party
Hot Burritos! The Flying Burrito Bros. Anthology 1969-1972
Dvorák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 "From the New World"
Amazon.com
The one thing you can expect from melancholic, too-smart-for-his-own-good singer-songwriter Dan Bejar is that he’s going to do what you do not expect. Folks were looking forward to more masterful indie rock on 2004's Your Blues, so they got arty synth-pop instead. On this EP, recorded with touring band (and fellow Vancouverites) Frog Eyes, Bejar revisits half the tunes on Blues. The entire exercise itself is a tad strange, but we’d ask nothing else from Bejar. These newer versions are rougher (recorded in one weekend) and, for the most part, better. "Notorious Lightning" gets a dirgey workout; taken from six to ten minutes, the full epic-osity-ness of the song shines through. Where "The Music Lovers" sounded like a New Wave perfume commercial before, here it resembles a drunken collaboration between the Hedwig band and a Street Legal Bob Dylan. In the end, it’s his most accessible release since 2002’s This Night. - Mike McGonigal
Album Description
While on tour in support of "Your Blues", Dan Bejar had his Vancouver neighbors, Frog Eyes, open for him and perform as his backing band. He liked what they did to his songs so much, he brought them into Lucky Mouse studios and attempted to capture the spirit of that tour. "Notorious Lightning And Other Works" is a six song EP that originally appeared on "Your Blues", reworked and reinterpreted by Destroyer and Frog Eyes. The result is more chaotic and stretched out than the songs on "Your Blues". Carey Mercer's slashing guitar work and maniacal yelps propel Bejar's songs into a more rocking territory not heard since Destroyer's 2001 opus "Streethawk: A Seduction". Not since The Band re-interpreted Dylan's songs in 1966, has a group so thoroughly pushed a songwriter to change the nature of his already fantastic songs.