a grammar

i am confused by certain descriptions of Destroyer’s “Kaputt”

This makes a lot of sense - that the reason I felt frustrated by my inability to detect the “strata of semiotic meaning” is because it doesn’t exist and the people talking the album up in that way are basically wrong.
Which leaves… what? Well, the references to Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, and the Aluminium Group help clear things up as well, in that I’m not fond of any of those bands either (a couple of Stereolab singles aside). So I can with a clear conscience file Destroyer in that category: groups who are intelligent, thoughtful, admirable builders of rich, unique sound-worlds, and whose albums I intend never to hear again in my life if I can possibly help it.

Yeah, pretty much! Although I feel like I should register that one reason I’m captivated by Kaputt — despite no longer getting a ton from some of the other bands discussed — is that there’s something brittle, frigid, and sour about it. A lot of the 90s acts I have in mind wound up making moony comfort records, or kitschy little daydreams (like, say, the High Llamas); they’d be imaginative spaces to get lost in, but one of the main emotional responses to them was just to think “awww, this is so nice.” One thing that pulls Kaputt out of that realm is that it has a lot more spine, and feelings of its own, some of which are a bit desperate, bitter, or frustrated. The best things I’ve read about it are the takes that skip over this stuff about whether soft-rock sounds are “uncool” and dig into those feelings. (Or the ways Bejar uses soft-rock sounds to get at them — to create a sense of weariness, emptiness, or even paralysis. They also help him be kind of high-handed and imperious, which he is sort of charming at! In that sense, it’s more Leonard Cohen than 90s dreamers.)