Part-time Pornographer

Over the past few years, a fairly predictable pattern has emerged. Some intrepid music reporter tasked with turning over a piece about Carl Newman’s band The New Pornographers will haphazardly toss out that cringe-inducing rock and roll compound word, “supergroup,” inevitably inducing an audible cringe from the red-haired singer and a rebuttal along the lines of, "No one had heard of any of these musicians before The New Pornographers, so the band can’t be considered a supergroup."

Of course, I can’t fault any young reporters for making such a mistake. These sorts of buzzwords have a way of slipping out in conversation after being pounded into our psyches by countless Spin and Magnet articles. Hell, I made that exact faux pas a few years back, shortly after the release of the band’s first album, Mass Romantic.

That said, Mr. Newman’s point is well taken, which is to say, who the heck is this Dan Bejar guy, anyway, if not some shady character who emerges out of the woodwork ever few years when the time comes to piece together another Pornographers disc? Bejar contributes two or three tracks that play like complex alien languages in amongst a sea of Newman’s straight-forward power-pop, propelled by a nasal voice channeling the whine of a young Bowie, only to slink back into the darkness of indie rock obscurity, like some latter day—admittedly less self-destructive—Brian Jones.

But somehow its those tracks—songs like “Jackie” and “Myriad Harbor”—that manage to stand out. These are the pop hits of an ever-so-slightly askew alternative universe, mined from a catalog that can’t help but embrace its love for pop records, even at its most sullen or complex. The answer to the Carl Newman supergroup conundrum is decidedly more complicated than a question of record sales or distinct chronology, because Dan Bejar has always been a superstar in his own fractured universe, or at least since he delivered his first record under the Destroyer moniker a dozen or so years ago, when The New Pornographers were little more than a twinkle in young Newman’s eye, whiling the days away with the primitive power pop of Zumpano.

Dan Bejar forms his own supergroups. They boast names like Swan Lake and Hello, Blue Roses, but Destroyer will forever be his baby, delivering a record a year, with few exceptions since its inception, back in 1996, never failing to the expectations of a universe in which he gleefully pens his own rulebook.

April 22, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Kent & Wythe Aves.), B’klyn, 212-260-4700; 8, $15.