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Destroyer “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World”

“Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” is densely packed with memorable and chin-scratching lyrics by Dan Bejar, even more so than is typical for a Destroyer song. It feels almost as though he wrote an entire album of lyrics, scrapped the music, but jammed all the best Dan-isms into this song instead. The line that immediately captured both my attention and imagination comes about two minutes in: “insane intercourse, constant swapping while I fall asleep in a bass.” It’s quite evocative just in print, but there’s something in the way Bejar delivers the line that renders it very ambiguous in tone. I can’t tell if he sounds prudish or perverted here, it could go either way on any listen. It’s both? He sounds, at bare minimum, fascinated by the “constant swapping.”

But like I said, that’s just one of many quotables in this song. I’m also quite fond of these:

“We are gathered here today to have a real nice time,” pomp dissolving into pleasant banality in the span of a few seconds.

“Absent friends, where’d you go?,” a question I think of all the time these days.

“Mirthless husk floating on an ocean” – it couldn’t be me.

“My life’s a giant lid closing on an eye,” grandiose but also self-diminishing.

“God is famous for punishing” – it’s true!

And of course: “Fools rush in, but they’re the only ones with guts.” Put this on an LED screen in public like a Jenny Holzer aphorism.

Buy it from Bandcamp.