Listen to Destroyer on the new episode of The FADER Interview
thefader.comDan Bejar has spent the past quarter-century articulating the thoughts of surrealists, nihilists, and aphorists. From his 1996 debut We’ll Build Them a Golden Bridge, the title of which is an allusion to Tolstoy, through the 2011 breakthrough Kaputt, up to 2020’s masterful Have We Met, the Vancouver-based solo artist has explored the fringes of syntax just as much as he has the outer limits of sophisti-pop and soft rock.
His protagonists have, like erudite barflies at the end of the night, been difficult to fully comprehend — and they often disappear as soon as they arrive.
Labyrinthitis, Bejar’s 13th album as Destroyer, is a slightly different proposition. Here there is a persistent voice, one that is, by Bejar’s own admission, petty and villainous.
This character wishes ill on others — at one point openly insisting that the person at the other end of the conversation is going to suffer.
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