Review Summary: Dan Bejar strikes again
For the uninitiated, Destroyer is shockingly
not a metal or hardcore band, but rather the long-running indie/art pop project of Dan Bejar, formerly of The New Pornographers. With thirteen albums released under the moniker, Destroyer has seen a fair amount of stylistic changes, but for the purposes of this review I’ll dwell heavily on the group’s latest era, the one beginning with the release of 2011’s widely acclaimed
Kaputt. During this stretch, Destroyer’s music has leaned on 80’s-derived sophisti-pop, although the exact dimensions of the style have changed album to album.
It’s important to note that Dan Bejar’s lyrics (delivered in his curious singing/talking way) have always been an essential part of Destroyer’s appeal. His style is a nearly unique blend of highly-literate passages, sardonic wit, and non sequiturs, frequently leading to lines which dwell right on the thin line between brilliance and ridiculousness. Consider these two examples (both taken from 2017’s underrated record
ken): “I can’t pay for this, all I’ve got is money” and “strike an empty pose, a pose is always empty”. However, Destroyer’s previous effort, 2020’s
Have We Met, finally at times overstepped this invisible boundary (at least in this reviewer’s humble opinion), with “clickety click click, the music makes a musical sound” standing out as a particularly egregious example. It’s to Bejar’s great credit that
Have We Met managed to still be quite great, indeed one of the best albums of 2020, despite these occasional missteps. Nonetheless, this made me wary that Destroyer was losing the plot, lacking the sense of balance that has always been so essential to the schtick. After all, Bejar’s lyrics have always been a tightrope act, tauntingly daring the listener to throw up their hands at the pretentiousness of what they’re hearing, before suddenly dropping some mocking hint which reveals that Bejar doesn’t take himself too seriously after all.
With
Labyrinthitis, I find my fears at least partially justified. There are some moments which strike me as artsy in an insufferable way, like the spoken word section at the end of the otherwise great “June” or the baby noise sample (I think?) in the instrumental ambient title track. However, taken as a whole this is yet another inspired effort by Destroyer. It’s a record with essentially two modes, both of which coexist together well. First, there are shorter, upbeat tracks like “Suffer” and the quite catchy “It Takes A Thief”. Second, there are the long-winded, generally more subtle songs like opener “It’s In Your Heart Now” and the aforementioned “June”. The former can be described as “soothing”, which is not something I’d ever thought to characterize a Destroyer tune as before, encapsulating some of the adjusted focus of this record. While I’d readily identify all recent Destroyer albums as producing a particular atmosphere,
Labyrinthitis is the only one of the bunch to be clearly, in my view,
atmospheric. The soundscapes are lush, awash with synths, guitar, and drums, regardless of whether it’s one of the dreamy and expansive slower numbers or the more concise and high-energy tunes (shout out to “Tintoretto, It’s For You”, which is as sonically aggressive as any recent Destroyer song). All told, this is a satisfyingly engaging listen, and as such it’s quite easy to forgive a few perceived missteps.
Labyrinthitis is a tough nut to crack, or to be more precise, it’s an album for which multiple narratives can be true at once, despite being somewhat conflicting. On the one hand, this is a record which sees Destroyer recalibrate their formula, quite successfully, to avoid any potential staleness in the fifth incarnation of their recent run. As such, it feels like a record that most, if not all, music fans with any interest in Destroyer could enjoy. On the flip side, this album also continues the trend that
Have We Met began, accentuating Bejar’s idiosyncrasies in a more pronounced way than before. This might well turn off a certain subset of listeners, particularly those who were ushered in by the smooth and sleek accessibility of
Kaputt. There’s little doubt, though, that those who are patient with this record will be rewarded, as that’s nearly always the case with Destroyer albums. After all the analysis, that’s what
Labyrinthitis really is: Destroyer doing what Destroyer does. Or to rephrase in a proper Bejar-ism: “I piss on the floorboards, the whole world’s a stage”.
