Simple. Direct. Obvious. These are not the adjectives normally applied to Destroyer songs. Yet, speaking to Dan Bejar about his project’s 12th studio album, ken, these are the words he repeatedly reaches for. While the record’s lyrics—featuring a blond Che Guevara, lunatics in satin, and a bride who pisses herself—are as enigmatic as fans have come to expect from the Vancouver indie veteran, many tracks are spare, and, musically at least, relatively straightforward. “You would have to go back to the ’90s to find this many two-and-a-half minute songs on a Destroyer record,” Bejar says with pride.
The songwriter’s shift towards brevity was partially inspired by a solo acoustic tour last fall, during which he road tested a more intimate style following the cinematic, full-band attack of 2015’s Poison Season. “I wanted to get my hands dirty,” he says of the experience, which found him traveling alone through America’s heartland just before the presidential election, tracking demos of new songs in hotel rooms and trying them out in front of live audiences. “I’d heard of people doing that, and it always struck me as insane.”
When it was time to make the new record, he teamed with trusted drummer Josh Wells, and the pair transformed Bejar’s demos into a stark landscape of gothy synths, militaristic rhythm, and apocalyptic ambience. Selecting a core group of sounds to work with, the two bonded over a deep appreciation of the Cure. “Not so much Robert Smith,” Bejar clarifies, “just the general sound—the drums, the guitar, the basslines. Their records are very melodic, but there’s this dark grey quality to them.” His goal, as he puts it, was to answer the very Destroyer question: “How could a decrepit-sounding voice sing in a dark, New Romantic world?”
1. “Sky’s Grey”
Dan Bejar: I know it’s not a rager in any sense, but it’s the one that’s closest to my heart lyrically. When I sing it, I feel it.
It seemed like a cool project to squirrel yourself away with. The song paints a picture of dreariness and collapse, people just soiling themselves. And the only antidote offered up—the only light—is this book that I’m working on called The New Oliver Twist, if it even is a book. It also seems like a fool’s errand, which Destroyer has always been super fond of. It’s a romantic call to arms amidst a disgusting scenario, a silver lining that’s not a silver lining at all.
2. “In the Morning”
You know when you go to some rock festival, and there are bands around, and you feel like you’re staring at ghosts? It’s like death row. In rock or pop music, there is an ephemeral quality, which I guess we applaud. It implies that you’re a ticking time bomb, but instead of exploding, you just disappear. That’s a feeling I have, but I didn’t want it to be said in a super negative way. I wanted it to be more like, “Hey bands, you should embrace this dance with death. Don’t fool yourselves: You will be gone soon.” That’s why it goes, “bands sing their songs and then disappear into the rhythm of the night.” It’s a pleasant, vaguely mysterious, possibly sensual line—and also a super hack line borrowed from the DeBarge song. I don’t think it’s supposed to be as pointed as it sounds. It just had a nice flow to it and struck me as true.
3. “Tinseltown Swimming in Blood”
I like the term “tinseltown.” It’s old American language that doesn’t make too much sense anymore. It implies the fake glamour of showbiz. Even without it being explicit, it implies something that’s gonna chew you out, stretch you up, and spit you out. When I think of tinseltown, I think of being turned out by the pimp that is show business. For me, what stands out in that song are these choruses and this outro that are shockingly heartfelt. They sound like someone standing up in a circle and pouring their heart out.
4. “Cover From the Sun”
When I first wrote it, it was much more in a pub rock vein. I was thinking of a Pete Doherty, picaresque kind of song. It seems like a short little adventure to me, a quick rollick. It’s atypical, which I think is cool.
Yeah, that’s typical Destroyer bullshit. It’s a fun song that rips on itself in a way. It’s definitely mocking the singer.
5. “Saw You at the Hospital”
I like it as a breath in the middle of the record—I also like it because I started writing it in a hospital.
I got really bad pneumonia during the Poison Season tour, and one thing you’re not supposed to do is drink and sing your way through that. It’s the sickest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I went to a hospital in Switzerland to get antibiotics, and they’re like, “Actually, you have to stay here for three days.” I was pretty out of it. I hadn’t slept in... I don’t know how long. Getting sick when you’re living on a bus is not good.
I remember being in the hospital, maybe a bit doped up, and thinking of classic “ending up in the hospital” songs. The Stones have a couple good ones. I was like, “OK, I’m gonna throw my hat in.” I came up with the first couple lines about being insane and the gown on wrong in the rain—I had my gown on all fucked up. There were also lots of ridiculous lyrics that did not make it into the song, stuff about Swiss nurses making eyes at me. Just the ramblings of a not-well mind.
Yeah, that’s not generally how I write at all. In the end, the song took off in a different direction. I started thinking about places of sickness or madness, which were being equivocated with castles and the Palace Hotel and decadence. It ended up being more like this whirling ball of depravity, which mellows out in the end with someone watching guitar amplifiers in a snowstorm. Just image-based stuff, Swiss surrealism.
6. “A Light Travels Down the Catwalk”
I really do like playing and singing this song, which is probably part of what drove me to write more songs on the guitar. I tried it with the band for Poison Season, but there was a folk-pop jauntiness to the chord progression that seemed at odds with the lyrics, which were trying to describe a glamorous world in which Satan presents him or herself. Once a lot of the melodic movement was taken out, it really came alive for me, because it exists in really stark contrast to the vocals. I think it’s good singin’. It shows that I’ve had some practice singing that song.
It became apparent that the dark minimalism of the music brought out a brooding quality to the words that I didn’t even realize because, you know, I just write this shit.
7. “Rome”
In some ways, the songs get weirder or more disparate on the second half. “Rome” seems really discombobulated to me. When I brought it in, it really had more of a singles bar vibe, like a sad disco song. Lyrically, there’s an aging-cruiser vibe to it. But it ended up getting cloaked in this Disintegration-style grandeur. Huge drums. It has a military quality now. I’ll be honest, I thought it was going to be a groovy ditty, to the extent that I wasn’t sure it should even be on the record. But as we worked on it, it became larger and larger sounding. It took on its own character.
8. “Sometimes in the World”
The brevity of the songs is something I’m still trying to digest, but this is just a Destroyer campfire song. Five years ago, I never would have recorded it. Just that first line: “I can’t pay for this, all I’ve got is money.” I really like it, but it made me feel uncomfortable right away, writing it and singing it.
Yeah, someone addressing the ills of the world in a direct way. They’re statements that are maybe obvious, but if they’re so obvious, then how can the world possibly be how it currently is? And then there’s really sad lines: “Sometimes in the world the thing that you love dies, and you cry and cry and cry.” That’s not something you normally hear in a Destroyer song!
9. “Ivory Coast”
I wanted it to sound desolate. My singing sounds kind of wasted and empty, which I really like. It’s got a strung-out vibe. There’s a quality to the vocal where I don’t really sound like myself.
Miserable pirates—the down-and-out, sad mercenary.
10. “Stay Lost”
It’s basically a user’s guide to being in the world. It addresses the audience in a way that’s anthemic, but it’s not an anthem. Or if it’s an anthem, it’s one where you’re supposed to sing along in your speaking voice. It’s a call to abandonment, or a call to roaming, or to embrace hopelessness. It’s an attempt, somehow, to sing about those things melodically in an uplifting way, even if you’re not trying to provide any hope whatsoever.
The song seems built from the parts of rock’n’roll. The first eight Destroyer records are in love with rock’n’roll but they are constantly attacking on the language of rock’n’roll—they are filled to the brim with concerns that you’re not supposed to find in a rock song. At some point, there was a shift. I mean, I still get excited about hearing cool words in songs, and I still get bummed out by how, 99 percent of the time, the words in songs just range from pointless to bad. There is a desire in me to have the words and the music become one whole.
11. “La Regle Du Jeu”
I can’t say those words without conjuring up that film, but it wasn’t inspired by it. It’s more inspired by it feeling so good for me to sing those words over and over and over again and trying to figure out why. The song has kind of a Euro cabaret feel, which is good, because I find it to be one of the more negative songs on the album. The images conjured in the song lead to something terrible on the horizon. I do feel like I’m singing to America in some way.
The first verse just recites vague, classical dream imagery of the world collapsing, and the second verse is describing a scene at a terrible party where you sense something bad is going to happen. And after that, I’m just saying “la règle du jeu” over and over again, like a mantra or a prayer at America’s death bed.
I know there’s lots of political talk right now, but I don’t see this as a topical record. The state of America is terrible, but it doesn’t strike me as a wildfire. I see it as a slow, steady crawl towards a terrible conclusion. I thought if I did sing to America, I wanted to do it in a language that they didn’t understand—or that they possibly actively hated. I thought French would be good for that.
