Dan Bejar is a curious figure. Largely self-taught, he’s been making music since the mid-’90s, yet even now, he occasionally resists calling himself an artist. He views his albums not as collections of songs but as novels, places, or movies, and his body of work shifts in style with each release while retaining a distinctive core sound.
While he was a founding member of the indie supergroup The New Pornographers in 1999, Bejar is best known for his solo project, Destroyer, under which he has been creating music—though he might call it something else—since 1995. Despite the name, Destroyer’s sound defies the heavy, aggressive connotations you might expect, and is instead rooted in indie rock, venturing into jazz, electronic, and other unexpected genres throughout its discography.
A good starting point is “Kaputt” (2011), an album that softens rock’s edges and offers a rich, lush sound. Like much of Bejar’s music—who’s described his writing process as “just like putting words together, and then, at some point, they start to come together as songs”—the songs on “Kaputt” wrap the listener in a cozy haze, with meaning continuously fading in and out of reach.
If you’ve ever gone from hot to cold with glasses on, much like coming out of the sauna into brisk winter air: Destroyer is akin to clearing your glasses and putting them back on, having a few brief moments of unobstructed view, and then, eventually, falling behind a layer of fog again.
People say that Dan “writes specifically about nothing in particular”. Seinfeld nods solemn approval. I hope you enjoy.
Coryphe 