No Destruction

"No Destruction" received very positive reviews from contemporary music critics. The song was chosen upon release as Pitchfork Media's "Best New Track". Mike Powell stated that, "Foxygen's "No Destruction" is essentially a collage of quotes: Bob Dylan's straight-on delivery of crooked, impressionistic lyrics, the warm weariness of the Velvet Underground's self-titled third album, and the lazy anthems of Pavement. In short: big-budget feeling, played with shoestring ambition. What makes it sound fresh isn't that it faithfully imitates the past, but that it somehow fails to—a product of alluringly broken logic." Powell continues by saying, "Listeners coast-to-coast will no doubt notice the jab "There's no need to be an asshole/ You're not in Brooklyn anymore", but the lyrical heart of the song comes later: "You think it's over, oh you think it's over / To be someone who smokes pot in the subway with me", a semi-desperate diss from an old friend who can't see how things really are in part because they can't let go of how they were. Awkward nostalgia is a good subject for a band whose music sounds like it traveled decades to get here and got roughed up every step of the way."^[2]