Poison Season

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Poison Season
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Studio album by
Destroyer
ReleasedAugust 28, 2015
Genre
Length52:11
Label
Producer
Destroyer chronology
Five Spanish Songs (EP)
(2013) 		Poison Season
(2015) 		ken
(2017)
Singles from Poison Season
  1. "Dream Lover"
    Released: May 21, 2015
  2. "Girl in a Sling"
    Released: July 8, 2015
  3. "Times Square"
    Released: August 12, 2015

Poison Season is the tenth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Destroyer, released on August 28, 2015, by Merge Records and Dead Oceans Records.[1]

Release

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The first song released from Poison Season, "Dream Lover", was posted on SoundCloud on May 21, 2015.[2] The album's release date, track list, and artwork were announced the same day.[2]

A second song from Poison Season, "Girl in a Sling", was released online on July 8, 2015.[3] On the same day, the music video for "Girl in a Sling", directed by David Galloway, was released.[4] The video cuts back and forth between shots of Bejar, who's working in a darkroom and singing in the shadows, and residential areas in decay. Director David Galloway explained in a press release that the video's tragic tone is meant to fit the album's overall vibe:

Bejar sings a lot about cities and girls and injury, sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes they are the same thing, as surreal novelists would have us believe. Besides, people like to see Dan sing—which he doesn't do a lot of in this video, but he does do a little bit. We wanted to make a video that dealt with central Destroyer themes: to some, Destroyer is a lech; to some, he is an arsonist; to some, he is a savior. To me, he is the consummate comedian, but he resists that role. So we decided to go the opposite way and make something sad, something tragic, something that fits the new record. The adage “comedy equals tragedy plus time” is attributed to Carol Burnett's mum. Or it might have been Steve Allen. Either way, I always want Dan to do physical comedy, but he resists. He's a natural, though. He's the Pacific Northwest's Buster Keaton, and I hope one day to share that with the world. One day. For now, though, there's just this sadness. This poison season.

— David Galloway, Pitchfork[3]

A third song from Poison Season, "Times Square", was released on August 12, 2015, on SoundCloud.[5] On August 27, 2015, a day before Poison Season's release, a stop motion music video for "Times Square", directed by Shayne Ehman, was released.[6] The music video features Dan Bejar singing to the camera as a number of anthropomorphized forest friends rendered with stop-motion animation sing and dance along. The director, Shayne Ehman, described the process of making the video:

We ended up just wandering around New York til 3am and the city seemed completely dead. We could have been anywhere, really. I needed to get outside and shoot in natural light in order to serve as a sort of conduit for those 'forces of nature in love...' which seem to rule the song. I let the sun do its thing and let the earth do it's [sic] thing and watched time unfold. I watched the clouds unfold and unpack and packup. I was at their mercy, completely.

— Shayne Ehman, Pitchfork.[7]

Critical reception

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Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?7.7/10[8]
Metacritic86/100[9]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusicStarStarStarStarHalf star[10]
The A.V. ClubA−[11]
Entertainment WeeklyA−[12]
The GuardianStarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[13]
MojoStarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[14]
NME8/10[15]
Pitchfork7.6/10[16]
QStarStarStarStarFile:Star empty.svg[17]
Rolling StoneStarStarStarHalf star[18]
Spin8/10[19]

Poison Season received widespread critical acclaim from music critics upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 86, based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[9]

Jayson Greene of Pitchfork gave the album a favorable review stating, "Poison Season retains the sumptuous melancholy of Kaputt, leavening it with the elegant swoon of Nelson Riddle-era Frank Sinatra. There are string arrangements all over Poison Season, and they are gorgeously recorded: the orchestra on "Girl in a Sling" sounds like 180-gram vinyl even while in earbuds. Destroyer has always partly been a nostalgia project, even when Bejar's nostalgia was decidedly ersatz—his records aim to stir the feelings that classic recordings arouse in us. Streethawk hearkened back to glam-rock Bowie even if the resemblance was off, and the magic of Kaputt was partly that of a peculiar and gnomic figure like Bejar conjuring the jaded romanticism of Bryan Ferry. On Poison Season, he visits a different section of his record collection, one that predates rock'n'roll, and he applies all the studied love and imagination to the endeavor we've come to expect from him."

Accolades

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Publication Accolade Year Rank
Pitchfork The 50 Best Albums of 2015 2015
43[20]
Uncut The Top 75 Albums of the Year 2015
36[21]

Track listing

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No.TitleLength
1."Times Square, Poison Season I"2:33
2."Dream Lover"3:48
3."Forces From Above"5:51
4."Hell"3:17
5."The River"3:35
6."Girl in a Sling"3:04
7."Times Square"4:11
8."Archer on the Beach"4:56
9."Midnight Meet the Rain"3:24
10."Solace's Bride"3:43
11."Bangkok"5:14
12."Sun in the Sky"5:33
13."Times Square, Poison Season II"3:02
Total length:52:11

Personnel

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  • Daniel Bejar – MIDI, mixing, producer, vocals
  • John Collins – bass
  • Ted Bois – piano, Roland D50
  • Nicolas Bragg – electric guitar
  • Fabiola Carranza – cover photo
  • David Carswell – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, MIDI, mixing, producer
  • JP Carter – effects, trumpet
  • Maggie Fost – design
  • Dave Graham – engineer
  • Henry Lee – viola
  • Peggy Leo – cello
  • Jeff Lipton – mastering
  • Tyson Naylor – DX-7, piano
  • Erik Nielsen – assistant engineer
  • Dylan Palmer – contrabass
  • John Raham – editing, engineer, string mixing
  • Maria Rice – mastering engineer
  • Joseph Shabason – flute, saxophone
  • Stefan Udell – string arrangements
  • Josh Wells – bongos, congas, drums, percussion
  • Rebecca Whitling – violin
  • Jesse Zubot – arranger, editing, string mixing, viola, violin

Charts

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Chart (2015) Peak
position
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[22] 52
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[23] 31
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[24] 54
Scottish Albums (OCC)[25] 53
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[26] 94
UK Albums (OCC)[27] 90
UK Independent Albums (OCC)[28] 6
US Billboard 200[29] 118
US Top Alternative Albums (Billboard)[30] 13
US Independent Albums (Billboard)[31] 9
US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)[32] 19
US Vinyl Albums (Billboard)[33] 4

References

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  22. ^ "Ultratop.be – Destroyer – Poison Season" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 4, 2015.
  23. ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Destroyer – Poison Season" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  24. ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Destroyer – Poison Season" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  25. ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  26. ^ "Swisscharts.com – Destroyer – Poison Season". Hung Medien. Retrieved September 9, 2015.
  27. ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  28. ^ "Official Independent Albums Chart Top 50". Official Charts Company. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  29. ^ "Destroyer Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved September 9, 2015.
  30. ^ "Destroyer Chart History (Top Alternative Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  31. ^ "Destroyer Chart History (Independent Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  32. ^ "Destroyer Chart History (Top Rock Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  33. ^ "Destroyer Chart History (Vinyl Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
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