9. We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge (1996)

Destroyer’s 1996 homespun debut is a perfect snapshot of a major artist finding his legs, the sort of anything-goes miasma that Eric’s Trip used to render free from concerns for fidelity and an emphasis on one-take spontaneity. It would have required a particularly discerning ear to identify Bejar in this iteration as the major songwriter he was to become, but the evidence is there on close inspections of tunes like the devil-may-care “I, As, McCarthy” and the stoned-contemplations of “J. Tailor,” which previews both Bejar’s penchant for poignant, elliptical character sketches and surprise mentions of rock loyalty past (this time it’s Roger McGuinn). Like the experience of watching Michael Jordan as a high school senior, We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge is fun in the sense of “Well, we thought he was GOOD. But we had no idea what he’d become ….”