Destroyer: Poison Season

7.9/10

Initially opens on a sleepy note of strings and a bit of piano that gives way to synths then quietly returns to the strings.  An opening interest due to its departure from Kaputt's meticulously dreamy synth pop overload, instead of the dream its like being put slowly to sleep by a man whispering beautifully abstract thoughts into your ear.  Then its bursts into a return to Kaputt done by the E Street Band with a chorus of dream lovers on the run.  Energy like this is never seen again on the album, it remains closer to the opener Times Square, Poison Season 1, but the sharp twist is puncturing in a way that scars for the rest of the albums.  Whats most odd about Poison Season is that although its closer to Kaputt then anything else in his discography than any of his earlier albums, yet it never grabs on to that albums lucid dream drugged numb atmosphere.  It oddly never feels that atmospheric though strings and synths are a constant.  They never meld into each other the way they did on Kaputt.  The strings stand by themselves quite a few times just playing off Bejar's voice and it almost registers as campy.  Its obviously self conscious, but while it may just be funny in the moment those strings do build to a feeling of grandiosity, that while may not be a fully immersive, does give the songs a feeling of total romanticism and importance similar to that of Springsteen.