Destroyer

Since its formation in 1995, Destroyer has traced an ever-shifting path shaped by founder Dan Bejar’s distinctive vocals and elliptical approach to songwriting. While Bejar balanced commitments to other projects, including the New Pornographers and Swan Lake, the band moved from the Bowie-tinged indie folk of its earliest work toward increasingly elaborate explorations of arrangement, instrumentation, and vocal delivery. Bejar’s understated yet dramatically inflected style remains the fixed point around which each new phase revolves, whether the acoustic melodrama of 2004’s Your Blues, the cinematic lounge pop of 2011’s Kaputt, or the synthesizer-driven and spoken-word experiments of 2020’s Have We Met and 2022’s Labyrinthitis.

Bejar launched Destroyer as a solo endeavor in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1995. The project’s debut, 1996’s We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge, arrived as an electric folk album that immediately prompted comparisons to David Bowie rooted in Bejar’s singular voice. Adding a rhythm section for the first time, he recorded 1998’s City of Daughters, a minimally produced set of pop songs whose increasingly idiosyncratic lyrics began to draw notice. By the release of 2000’s Thief, again tracked in Vancouver, the group had grown to a quintet; the same sparse production and Bowie parallels persisted, yet Bejar’s enigmatic words and vocal presence asserted themselves more fully as the band’s identity solidified. That same year he joined Carl Newman, formerly of Zumpano, among the principal songwriters on the New Pornographers’ acclaimed debut, Mass Romantic, issued by Mint Records.

Destroyer’s fourth album, 2001’s Streethawk: A Seduction, continued directly from the preceding record’s aesthetic. The follow-up, 2002’s This Night, offered an oblique, melody-rich collection that cast Bejar as a declamatory, despondent singer and marked his first release for Merge. Even more idiosyncratic material surfaced on 2004’s Your Blues. Bejar then teamed with touring partners Frog Eyes for the 2005 EP Notorious Lightning and Other Works, which re-recorded selections from Your Blues with Frog Eyes supplying the backing tracks. He also supplied three songs to the New Pornographers’ widely praised Twin Cinema, which reached the Billboard Top 50, and spent much of the year on the road with the Canadian supergroup. February 2006 brought Destroyer’s Rubies, a return to the guitar-centered sound of This Night infused with Streethawk-era theatricality.

After further work with the New Pornographers, Swan Lake, and the Sydney Vermont collaboration Hello, Blue Roses, Bejar resumed activity under the Destroyer name with his eighth album, 2008’s Trouble in Dreams. The next year saw both Swan Lake’s second album, Enemy Mine, and the ambient Bay of Pigs EP. He contributed three tracks to the New Pornographers’ fifth studio album, 2010’s Together, before issuing 2011’s Kaputt, Destroyer’s ninth LP and its first to enter the Billboard 200. Kaputt’s broadened palette incorporated smooth saxophone lines and ambient electronics, while its markedly polished production signaled another stage in the band’s development.

Bejar released the Five Spanish Songs EP in 2013, featuring material originally written by Antonio Luque of Sr. Chinarro. The following summer the New Pornographers issued their well-received sixth album, Brill Bruisers, which included three songs penned by Bejar. A second Hello, Blue Roses album appeared on WZO in February 2015, and later that summer Destroyer returned with Poison Season, a strings- and horns-rich, New York-themed epic that re-entered the Billboard 200. In spring 2017 the New Pornographers released their first album without Bejar, Whiteout Conditions. Later that fall Destroyer emerged with Ken, its title drawn from the original name of Suede’s song “The Wild Ones.” January 2020 brought Have We Met, Bejar’s eleventh album as Destroyer, which he characterized as his long-delayed Y2K record in both thematic and sonic terms, centered on vintage-synthesizer arrangements. 2022’s Labyrinthitis leaned further into experimental disorder, juxtaposing gravelly spoken-word passages, dissonant guitar figures, and self-referential nods to the band’s earliest minimal folk-rock style.