Destroyer (band)

We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge, Destroyer's 1996 debut, is made up of sixteen lo-fi home-recordings. One reviewer suggested that the album combines Bejar's "gift for melodies" with "a concerted effort to make the recording downright inconsumable; the guitars are always out of tune, and the vocals of Fisher-Price quality. 'Static means punk / tuning is junk,' Bejar moans on one track."[5] Ideas for Songs, released on cassette in 1997, features songs akin to those on his first album. The cassette stemmed from a request to contribute songs for a compilation album.[6]

As Bejar gained popularity in Vancouver's music scene, he was joined by producer John Collins for 1998's City of Daughters, which was recorded at a proper studio. Pitchfork noted that the songs still sounded "homespun", also noting "[t]he wordiness that would become something of a trademark is in full effect", but that "unlike much of what came later, not every line is worthy of examination."[7]

Thief (2000) embodied "Bejar's first stab at matching his grandiose, idiosyncratic vision to a showier sound"; it was the first to feature a backing band on every track.[8] The record's "anthemic yet understated"[9] piano-driven ballads have characteristically enigmatic lyrics, though some reviewers interpreted them as critiques of the music industry.[10][11]

Streethawk: A Seduction (2001) realized the sonic refinement started with City of Daughters. Bejar put it this way: "I don't think it gives credence to any kind of conceptualization of the records, but I hope that City of Daughters, Thief, and Streethawk will pop into some kind of a progression that ends with Streethawk."[12] A critical success, the album retrospectively received a rating of 9.1/10 from Pitchfork.[7]

Frontman Dan Bejar

The 2002 rock album This Night was a dramatic change in style. The looser, less rehearsed style was criticized as "messy [and] haphazard without purpose",[13] though other critics praised the "beautiful mess of sounds" as "challenging... [and] a powerful, cohesive whole."[11] In a 2006 interview (after the release of Your Blues and Destroyer's Rubies), Bejar said the album "came together pretty quickly – we probably could have used more than four or five days to mix the whole thing, but that's all hindsight. It's still my favorite Destroyer record."[12]

Your Blues (2004) saw Destroyer take another unexpected turn, using MIDI instrumentation for almost all the backing music. Bejar coined the term "European blues" to describe its unique, theatrical sound.[14] One reviewer pointed out that "Bejar's unusual voice sounds more confident, and higher up" in the synth-rich arrangements.[15] In another twist, the EP Notorious Lightning & Other Works reworked six tracks from the record with a live band, the very thing the LP had forsaken (the band was Frog Eyes, who toured with Destroyer in support of Your Blues).

Bejar returned with a live band for 2006's Destroyer's Rubies, delivering his most confident record up to that point. The backing band took new-found prominence and, according to Bejar, "[t]he production seems... warm and lush and pretty focused on just making the band sound good and having everything sit well together."[12] Now magazine observed, "[w]hile the sheer density of Bejar's writing can be overwhelming, Destroyer's Rubies is, on a musical level, the most 'accessible' disc he's released."[16]

For Trouble in Dreams (2008), "there was a scary lack of ideas coming into the record", Bejar admitted.[17] Destroyer's piano player Ted Bois took it upon himself, as an alternative to keyboard and piano accompaniment, to create all string and synth arrangements for the songs.[17] At the time, Bejar said it was the "hardest record" to make.[17]

After the 2009 EP Bay of Pigs came 2011's full-length album, Kaputt (featuring a slightly modified "Bay of Pigs" track). Bejar cited influences such as Miles Davis and Roxy Music for his new jazz-infused, lounge music-inspired, sophisti-pop direction. In multiple interviews, Bejar variously stressed that he "sang in a completely different manner, almost unconscious of even singing, more like speaking into a vacuum, and was really happy with the results."[18][19] The record entailed a number of firsts for Destroyer: first national television performance (on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon); first official music video; first female backing vocals; and the first time Bejar performed without an instrument on tour – his concentration placed solely on his singing. Kaputt was short listed for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize[20] and was Pitchfork's second best album of 2011.[21]

Smaller in scale, Destroyer's fourth EP Five Spanish Songs is sung entirely in Spanish, Bejar covered songs by Sr. Chinarro (es). Bejar's own tongue-in-cheek press release announcing the new songs began: "It was 2013. The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable."[22]

Bejar released Poison Season on August 28, 2015. Bejar notes that the album's sound grew from "just really getting into what we were sounding like playing live [following Kaputt]."[4] Bejar added that he would not have been able to make such an ambitious album if Kaputt had not been successful.[23] Recorded with a live band and a pronounced string section, the album's "grand cinematic set of songs"[23] feature Bejar singing with a broader range than before: "This is the first record that I've ever done that comes close to my idea of myself as a singer", Bejar said.[24]

In 2017, Bejar released ken, an album produced by Destroyer drummer Joshua Wells (who was also a member of Black Mountain).[25]

Destroyer's twelfth studio album, Have We Met, was released on January 31, 2020.[26]

On March 25, 2022, the band's thirteenth studio album, Labyrinthitis, was released.[27]