The Echoplex tends to play up its murkiness well—generally, it’s too dark to tell what color your drink is, or if your date is male, or human. Tonight’s show was so dark that Dan Bejar, a.k.a. Destroyer, appeared to be candlelit. It fit. I can’t say for certain what the primary objective was in seating the mostly crazy-eyed and adoring audience in rows right up against the stage. The result was a wonderful, docile sort of intimacy, which was exponentially multiplied by Bejar’s solo performance—he played acoustic versions of songs that on record are often as densely orchestral as this sort of (indie rock? hooky Bowie-esque Spanish guitar balladry? “European Blues,” as he calls it?) music gets.

Most folks come to Destroyer in a roundabout way—they follow the song-length breadcrumbs Bejar’s left on stellar albums by the New Pornographers, or they hear his unmistakable contributions to Canadian supergroup Swan Lake, or they stumble backwards through other bands’ admitted influences until they come to Destroyer’s catalog. It’s sizeable. Since 1996′s debut We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge, Bejar’s averaged one Destroyer album per year, which means that his body of work is as sprawling and self-reflexive as his best lyrics. Said work has a following that’s a few degrees past cultishly devoted, as evidenced by a vast, independent Wiki dedicated to annotating the band’s songs. It was clear that the turnout tonight included fans from across the spectrum—no two people I asked had the same favorite album. There was no single song that everyone recognized, but every offering, including “Downtown,” a new song from a forthcoming album, was met with sharp intakes of breath and whispered (or slurred, barky) exclamations.

Standouts included recent selections as well as the plaintive “Goddess of Draught” from 2002′s This Night, and “No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against the State of Our Love, Baby)” from 1998′s City of Daughters, though the entire set was executed with passion and a generous amount of precision. Also, a weirdly genial sense of humor—in lieu of muttered banter, there were self-effacing laughs and ceremonious bowing. A request during the encore ["Self Portrait With Thing (Tonight Is Not Your Night)"] was played in an altered time-signature to accommodate the lack of a band. The evening’s most gasp-inducing moment came in the form of what Bejar called a “cover,” though it was one of his own songs from Swan Lake’s 2006 album Beast Moans. The original recording of “The Freedom” features the echoey yelps of Bejar’s fellow band members—Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown—resounding as Bejar belts out an epic ode to miscommunication. Tonight’s version lacked the aural addendums of the supergroup, but maintained Bejar’s signature sound, which over the course of the night managed to fill a comically dark room with its good-natured ferocity.

—Amalia Levari