Destroyer Announce New Album ken, Share Lyric Video for “Sky’s Grey”

Canadian indie rocker Dan Bejar has announced his 12th album as Destroyer, coming this fall. ken is the follow-up to 2015’s Poison Season and our first sample of the forthcoming record is its opening track “Sky’s Grey,” which you can listen to below.

Bejar’s songs are characterized by abstract lyrics and idiosyncratic vocals, bringing in a realm of different influences, and the new record will surely hold true to that. In a press release, Bejar had this to say about the new album:

Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for “The Wild Ones” (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was “Ken.” I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe “The Wild Ones” speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think “ken” also means “to know.”

ken was produced by Josh Wells of Black Mountain, who’s been drumming for Destroyer since 2012, and was recorded in the band’s jam space/studio dubbed The Balloon Factory. The album is due out Oct. 20 via Merge Records and available for preorder here.

Watch the lyric video for “Sky’s Grey” below, and check out ken’s full tracklist and album art beneath that.

ken Tracklist:
01. Sky’s Grey
02. In the Morning
03. Tinseltown Swimming in Blood
04. Cover From the Sun
05. Saw You at the Hospital
06. A Light Travels Down the Catwalk
07. Rome
08. Sometimes In the World
09. Ivory Coast
10. Stay Lost
11. La Regle du Jeu

ken Album Art: