Pitchfork London 2025: Destroyer

The support act for tonight’s Barbican show feels extra special, as we’re treated to The Fiery Furnaces’ first UK show since 2009. The Friedberger siblings - older brother Matthew on the grand piano, and younger sister Eleanor at the mic - have recently returned from a long hiatus.

Matthew has spoken about how he felt disconnected from their “impersonal” 2021 shows where the duo played with a large band. Tonight, with the songs stripped of their idiosyncratic arrangements, the spotlight shines on Eleanor’s strikingly bizarre lyrics (aided in no small part by Matthew’s graceful piano playing). Her delivery is caught somewhere between Laurel Canyon troubadour and art rock outsider.

The duo make the curious decision to perform their catalog as a series of medleys, stringing together two or three of their already unwieldy compositions into one. For the uninitiated like myself, you wouldn’t notice where the seams fell. There’s oceans of depth packed into these epic tales, about half of them taken from the 2004 opus Blueberry Boat. While it’s difficult to parse what’s going on without the aid of a dramatis personae and a heavy encyclopedia, Eleanor’s love of pure language is a delight to behold in itself.

Dan Bejar’s Destroyer are the headline act, and from the get-go, I’m struck by how hard his seven-piece band rocks. Since 2011’s masterful Kaputt, the albums have tended towards louche barfly music, with Bejar performing his ‘smartest drunk at closing time’ half-character. Tonight though, the music sounds infused with new life.

An early run of ‘hits’ lets us know we’re in safe hands. ‘Savage Night at the Opera’ is a lively reminder of how indebted Bejar has always been to New Order, while the bubbling synths of ‘Tinseltown Swimming in Blood’ are the perfect soundtrack for leaning back in the comfy Barbican seats and nursing a double whisky Coca-Cola.

New record Dan’s Boogie - a merely ‘very good’ Destroyer album - turns out to be the source of most of tonight’s highlights. Set opener ‘The Same Thing as Nothing at All’ washes in on a tidal wave of noise, while the wonderfully-titled ‘Hydroplaning off the Edge of the World’ is a wonderful example of their full-band attack. Even a middling album track like ‘Sun Meet Snow’ packs a surprising amount of power in a live setting. By contrast, some of the older cuts like ‘Painter in Your Pocket’ lack a little juice, but this is a minor quibble.

In lieu of a traditional encore, something rather extraordinary happens. Trumpet player JP Carter begins a meandering solo, and Bejar sits down on the floor. Other band members follow suit, or even lie down. A couple of them wander backstage, returning a short while later. Carter turns his solo into a loop pedal odyssey. I think the keys player joins in at one point, I’m not sure. I’m totally transfixed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. I can’t honestly tell you how long this went on for, but I guess it must have been about 10 minutes? After a certain amount of time, the band transitions into an absolutely spellbinding rendition of ‘Suicide Demo for Kara Walker’, and then they’re off, like it was a mirage.