When I listen to the new Destroyer album, I feel like a stoned casanova, sitting alone at a wooden table in some smokey downtown bar, wearing nothing but an astronaut’s suit. Some jazzy funk band with a retro-70′s soul sound is playing onstage.
I make my way backstage and stay up all night doing cocaine, dancing, swigging Scotch and chasing women with blue eyes. I’d be sniffing lines in the back room like I was prepping for some concert I was never going to play, walking outside to smile at the sun.
The eventual grinding of my teeth would lead to a walk around the streets of San Francisco, passing others on their way to work, probably downtown somewhere near Union Square. I’d get breakfast at some half-filled dinner, sip coffee as briefcases and purses move at quick strides.
Yes, I had spent the night high out of my mind and trying to hook up, still I’d be sitting at this breakfast table alone again. The food would be serviceable, more grease than nutrition. The check would come all too fast. I couldn’t possibly pay.
I’d leave and it’d start raining. I’d get stoned on my way to Chinatown. Stumbling through some dusty gift ship displaying oven mitts emblazoned with the Golden Gate Bridge, I’d purchase some green stress balls marked with a Chinese character I’ll never understand.
“It must mean something to the effect of ‘strength and happiness,’” I’d say to the store clerk, pointing to my chiming round souvenirs.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” the clerk would say. “You’ve got it all backwards.”
No one would question me about the astronaut suit.
Destroyer plays Great American Music Hall Monday, March 21. Tickets are $16 and available here.
