Destroyer Ponders Life’s Mysteries on Dan’s Boogie
Dan Bejar’s 14th Destroyer album is both an intoxicating reflection on a remarkable, 30-year career and a thrilling, synth-opera step towards the project’s next chapter.
“God is famous for punishing,” Dan Bejar declares on “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World,” in a cacophonous assembly of synths, shakers and “ba-la-la-las.” With seconds to spare before reaching the five-minute mark, the song is a surreal aural and narrative banquet. In it, Bejar ponders religion, is mistaken for a Houston Rocket and a priest, expresses his love for the Gun Club and purchases a round of brandy. A career highlight from the Canadian wordsmith, the song is one of nine equally mesmerizing moments across Dan’s Boogie, a great record that cements Bejar’s unwavering stature as an extremely vital and tantalizing lyricist in the 21st century.
Whether Bejar is playing a sinister bystander in the smoky noir of the Fiver-assisted “Bologna,” or casually dropping references to the Crystals and Rue Morgan Avenue in his verses, Dan’s Boogie is a treasure trove of priceless lyrical trinkets. Bejar is known for favoring surreal scenarios and wry quips at people in the arts over dismantling his own domesticity. Dan’s Boogie, against a technicolor backdrop courtesy of John Collins’ wizardry, is led by existential concerns: “Who knows what’s out there, really?” he ponders on “The Ignoramus of Love.” At one point, Bejar literally turns to the breeze in an exchange, transmogrifying one of music’s most enduring lyrics into his own grinning resolution: “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” Bejar is instead left with more to consider when the breeze responds to his call: “It said, ‘Fuck it, I don’t need it, rules and religion.” Later, he attempts to trace time: “It has an end, it doesn’t have a beginning,” he delivers, menacingly, on the kaleidoscopic, screwball rock-opera “Sun Meet Snow.” In these anchoring themes—time and religion—Dan’s Boogie offers Bejar enough space to grapple with inevitable finales, both in life and music.
Producer John Collins has been an indispensable hand in developing and defining the Destroyer sound since 1998’s City of Daughters. Icy synth motifs, spiky guitar riffs, metallic drum sounds and smooth sax flourishes are just some of the foundational components to the musical language Collins has cultivated over the years with Bejar—Collins’ musical expression is as detailed and compelling as Bejar’s vocabulary. Dan’s Boogie rewards those who have loyally followed a discography that has shifted and evolved from sparse indie-rock, to smooth jazz-infused synth-pop and vivacious new wave temperaments. The album merges all of these components with awesome results:
Dan’s Boogie predecessor Labyrinthitis was clearly still swimming around Collins and Bejar’s minds while making the broadly layered synth landscape of “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World”, which reiterates “June”’s emotional plea—“Absent friends, where’d you go?”—and leaves a stuttered “S-s-s-suffer” suspended in the air; “Dan’s Boogie,” a jazz-led sophistication, moves with a similar romantic air and theatrical flair to Poison Season; and the iridescent bursts of Your Blues-style MIDI orchestration illuminates the panoramic opener “The Same Thing As Nothing At All,” another awe-striking opening track that matches past intro efforts in the Destroyer catalog, especially “It’s in Your Heart Now,” “Crimson Tide” and “Chinatown.”
And while the partnership between Bejar and Collins, along with the exceptional supporting cast of Destroyer players (Ted Bois, Joshua Wells, David Carswell, Nicholas Bragg), remains the same as it’s been since 2015, a few technical changes were employed in the very early stages of Dan’s Boogie. Bejar set himself a New Year’s Resolution in 2024 of playing the piano every day for a year. In spite of this practice lasting just four days, he credits that short pocket of time for facilitating the writing of much of Dan’s Boogie, including the title track, “Bologna” and “Cataract Time.” Returning to the piano for the pretty, Bacharach-like closer “Travel Light,” the intimate recording of Bejar soft-tapping his fingertips against the keys becomes a subtle percussive element in itself. Its intimacy and simplicity is graceful in both performance and how it provides a moment to catch your breath and reflect on all that Dan’s Boogie achieves in its economical 37-minute runtime.
But there’s an invigorating looseness to Dan’s Boogie that distinguishes it from its predecessors, apparent in the colorful splashes enhancing Bejar’s unselfconscious delivery of his stream-of-consciousness flow (“I wear see-through too much / And take strolls downtown / Thinking it’s a garden of shame / You take the night train / And live to see / Another Day,” he coyly croons on “Cataract Time”) and allowances of expectation-breaking, mid-song tangents (“I Materialize,” a blissful drive-by whose abrupt ending has the potential to spark immediate concern for the welfare of your soundsystem).
A few songs later, the eight-minute, opus-level “Cataract Time” has a transcendental essence from the offset: A twinkling menagerie of filigree harps, chiming triangle, soaring guitar licks, floating sax and light drumming comes together to create an image of a warm, purple-hued evening sky to match the “setting sun” backdrop. In press materials, Bejar described this iteration of his lyrics as “a reckoning, a dressing down.” The “Cataract Time” narrator carries the weight of uncertainty and weariness: “Been out on the road too long / Carve yourself out of illusion.” The song’s unhurried arrangement, moving along at the pace of a restorative stroll, ends with the repetition of there being “another day.” Whether the promise of more time offers a chance for a fresh start, or emphasizes the stifling constraints of a never-ending cycle, is yours to interpret.
With its self-referential color, Bejar casts a knowing glance on Destroyer’s dynamic discography throughout Dan’s Boogie. Still, the album signals a new era for the band. Returning to the moment in “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World” where Bejar sings, “We are now entering a new phase,” it’s fascinating to consider what a new era for Destroyer might look like. For almost 30 years, Dan Bejar has written all kinds of compelling characters and explored every dimly lit street corner with wit and finesse. Yet, his focus here dangerously fixated on human uncertainty. Miraculously and surreally, Dan’s Boogie‘s musical buffet fills us up with answers.
