Destroyer - Poison Season
Critic Score
Based on 34 reviews
2015 Ratings: #50 / 1021
User Score
Based on 487 ratings
2015 Rank: #116
Liked by 19 people
August 28, 2015 / Release Date
LP / Format
Merge, Dead Oceans / Label
Chamber Pop / Genre
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Skinny
Somehow, Bejar ensures all these pieces fit together seamlessly, and the picture that emerges feels damn close to perfect.
100
Pretty Much Amazing

Despite an overarching shagginess, this is an almost seamless artistic and conceptual exercise. Poison Season makes its predecessor appear minor by comparison, like a tuneful lark.

100
NOW Magazine

Poison Season employs strings, piano and horns to perfectly complement Bejar's even, offhand delivery of lines that, when stitched together, make up a droll, wondrous travelogue of storied metropolitan meccas.

91
Entertainment Weekly
His 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, from London to Bangkok.
91
A.V. Club

No matter what the context—horn-section rave-up, string quartet, druggy miasma—he sounds completely at home. Poison Season is the sound of an artist in complete control of the strange chaos around him.

90
Drowned in Sound
His slow ascent to the upper echelons of the underground is so unsurprising precisely because, as this latest album aptly demonstrates, Destroyer records speak to what we love about music, even whilst seemingly seeking to make a point out of its inadequacy.
90
Exclaim!

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.

90
The Line of Best Fit
It makes for hard but rewarding listening, and ultimately the kind of record on which every track becomes its own standout moment.
90
AllMusic
At nearly an hour in length, it feels immense, but more so from its unexpectedly cinematic stylings than from playing time -- with rotating, scene-setting arrangements (rock, jazz, chamber music) and beat-poetic narrative vignettes of a gritty reality seemingly from another time, or another mind.
80
The Needle Drop
Destroyer's latest record continues to show singer-songwriter Dan Bejar's talents as the modern age's preeminent rock poet.
80
Mojo
There's nothing bland about this fervid, ideasy album.
80
Spectrum Culture

Poison Season is yet another dramatic shift for an artist who can’t be simply defined by a genre or by what makes him popular and acclaimed throughout the 20 years he’s been making music as Destroyer.

80
Uncut

On Poison Season, Bejar re-embraces street rock, and recontextualises it as well.

80
Record Collector
On his 11th album, that gloss is pared down, revealing just how well-crafted and intricate Bejar’s songs have become.
80
Q Magazine

Poison Season sounds like a restless musical intellect stretching out with new confidence.

80
XS Noize

Overall this is a fantastic project filled with excellent performances, with really fantastic production that keeps the tracks sounding fresh and upbeat, while not over produced.

80
The Guardian

Everything that is potentially offputting – the lyrical opacity, the sonic excess, that voice – is what makes it such a striking and involving piece of work. In fact, it’s Bejar’s best.

80
Slant Magazine

By his usual standards, Poison Season is shockingly austere and restrained.

80
Tiny Mix Tapes

The result is an album that, on the one hand, feels much less focused or cohesive than Kaputt, but on the other hand comes across as all the more confident and playfully mature, precisely because it’s not trying to be.

80
DIY
Elegant and tender piano and strings mix with the strength of the band he’s been on the road with for the last few years. It’s certainly different to ‘Kaputt’ but it maintains Bejar’s unique voice.
80
musicOMH

Poison Season is another excellent Destroyer album, packed with songs that are graceful, beautiful and, yes, hummable.

80
No Ripcord

Poison Season is even more sumptuously complete, sleek and highly refined, repurposing the champagne-coated synths of Kaputt with the aid of a full band to further accentuate his high-brow witticisms.

80
SPIN

On Poison Season, Bejar’s new trappings may suggest self-sabotage, but the tremendously assured songcraft says otherwise.

80
NME
Bejar’s dismantled the old Destroyer sound, but he’s built something wonderfully disorientating in its stead.
79
Northern Transmissions

The songs in Poison Season manage to have a delicate sadness to them whilst still maintaining the signature Destroyer sense of vigour.

76
Pitchfork

He has never made, and will probably never make, a bad album—he's far too accomplished, intuitive, and literate for that. But on Poison Season, you can occasionally detect the dismaying sound of indie rock's greatest intellect second-guessing itself.

75
Consequence of Sound

While his new album, Poison Season, may not erase Kaputt from anyone’s memory, it is yet another engaging, tangled, beautiful environment, one that will be equally hard to forget.

70
Loud and Quiet
Compared with other Destroyer LPs, ‘Poison Season’ is a disjointed listen, surprisingly lacking the band’s usual brazen theatrics. Still, Dan Bejar remains indie rock’s last great shapeshifter, and it’s hard not to hear this as a stepping stone to another masterpiece.
70
FLOOD Magazine
On top of those emotional juxtapositions, “Poison Season” as a whole plays to Bejar’s greatest strength: the understanding that repetition opens more doors than it closes.
70
Rolling Stone
Bejar 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.
70
Clash
He doesn't want you to like 'Poison Season'. Good luck with that: at its best, it's irresistible.
65
Under the Radar

That's the cloud Poison Season is under-it's not bad, and it certainly has its moments. But on the heels of Kaputt, it can be a frustrating, uneven listen.

60
The Irish Times
Such a melange of sounds makes it difficult to absorb the album as a whole, but broken into manageable sections it’s an often a joyous listen.
50
Crack Magazine

Poison Season is a clever record, it’s big and bold but at the same time it has some offensively grandiose moments.

POPDESIGN
90

One of the most underrated masterpiece of him.

Highlights : Forces From Above, Bangkok, Times Square

MAN
69

Not as iconic as "Kaputt", but it's still a good effort from Destroyer!

orangedroog65
94

This album is one of the more focused destroyer records in my opinion, so much so that there’s three tracks that are effectually interpolations on the same idea. All the connective tissue seldom drifts away from the vibe set out in track 1. It’s another destroyer masterpiece, and I love Dan bejar a lot. I’d say this is maybe his moodiest record.

blackmage505
80

Consistent

Dinosaurbonez
90

A gorgeous sounding masterfully crafted record that grows on you

Houdanny
72

Honestly one of my favourite records of his! I think he exhibited a more back to basic approach to the songwriting and stylistic ideas here that just lands so much better than some of his more overwrought projects down the line. Not as great as his early early stuff, but I still find myself drawn back to this one more often than not!

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Added on: May 21, 2015