Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie
Pressing play on a new album from Destroyer is like checking in with an old friend for the first time in a while to see they’ve transformed themselves again. There are at least 14 different versions of this band, the brainchild of Vancouver’s Dan Bejar, and across the project’s 30-year existence, they’ve been in conversation with themselves, making sure just enough has changed before reappearing. Last heard on 2022’s LABYRINTHITIS, it sounds like the only reason we’ve waited three years for a follow-up is because Bejar wasn’t ready to commit to new music until fit to burst with ideas in early 2024, which is particularly interesting in the context of Dan’s Boogie because these nine new songs are full of them.
There’s a seven-piece band on here and damn, does it sound like it. That kind of sonic maximalism points to the madcap musical moves Bejar and company make on this record, with the understated lead single “Bologna” finding the band’s frontman giving way to an impassioned guest turn from Fiver’s Simone Schmidt. Their voice cuts through the song’s dense, murky makeup as the song’s lyrics catch the pair fantasizing about disappearing like thieves in the night: “There’s an outside chance you’ll never see me again / Night comes in on wings / That explains things.”
It typifies a sense of world-weariness that rears its head in places throughout the album, but is countered by more expansive offerings elsewhere, the record bursting into life with “The Same Thing as Nothing at All,” drummer Joshua Wells doing his level best to steal the spotlight from the song’s myriad musical and lyrical treats. “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” is similarly expressive, coming in hot with an irresistible vocal hook and barely letting its foot off the gas for five minutes, operating on sheer nervous energy before guitar squalls are thrown into the mix to telegraph the song going completely off-ramp, with an extended spoken-word segment from Bejar soaring over the top of a meticulous arrangement, carried by a sense of urgency that clicks into place when you learn that its lyrics were entirely improvised.
“I Materialize” takes things in the other direction. Simultaneously satisfying and leaving the listener wanting more, it acts as a neat summation of the record’s ambition, skating under 80 seconds and waltzing its way through a couple of plaintive verses before clattering to a halt, spilling over into “Sun Meet Snow,” on which Bejar can scarcely contain himself, his words tumbling over themselves with infectious enthusiasm, cueing up the full-band intensity of the song’s neatly-defined second half, all blown-out fuzz and clattering rhythms. It’s probably the most chaotic moment on the record, where the brooding intensity of the album’s lyric sheet bubbles to the surface.
It makes for a fascinating push-and-pull, seen most clearly on sprawling penultimate track “Cataract Time,” which is buoyed by a musical lightness of touch, opening out into an extended instrumental coda after several verses of some of the most downcast lyrics ever heard on a Destroyer record: “You’re sick of winning games / Been out on the road too long /Carve yourself out of illusion / You take the long way round a setting sun.”
Dan’s Boogie gets much more stripped back for its closing track, “Travel Light,”, which is just Bejar and a piano; an instrument he set out to learn as one of last year’s new year resolutions. It lasted all of four days, but he took the inspiration and ran with it, coming up with the album’s thesis statement in the process: striking while the iron’s hot has served Destroyer very well indeed, as the band enters its fourth decade of existence still firing on all cylinders. Their sound is chameleonic and not easily defined, but they’re on a hell of a run since re-emerging with Poison Season in 2015, and their latest is up there with their best. 30 years in and nowhere close to kaput; that’s surely worth dancing about.
Label: Merge
Year: 2025
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Destroyer : Dan’s Boogie
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