What exactly is a dance record? Is it an album that sounds like a club night, or simply one packed with dance tracks? It might sound odd, but Dan Bejar aligns with the first notion. Although most of the songs on Destroyer’s new album Labyrinthitis (Bella Union / PIAS) push forward with momentum, he insists the project isn’t about dance music per se. He explains that his initial aim was to create something you could dance to, almost as if he were aiming for Donna Summer’s peak hits. Yet the process took a different shape, and what emerged is not what he initially expected.
“When I think of dance music, I picture a steady four-by-four rhythm with a strong kick and bass. This record doesn’t feel like something you’d hear in a club today; perhaps it recalls a club from thirty-five years ago rather than the latest scene,” Bejar says during our conversation from Vancouver, where he sits on a couch in a casual, lived-in setting. He wears a weathered wool coat and his long, curly hair fills much of the Zoom frame. The journalist notes that apart from the opening track, the album unfolds as a seven-minute overture with a psychedelic, slow-tempo mood, and finishes with a straightforward folk piece featuring voice and guitar. The response is light-hearted: Bejar smiles and notes, “I’m glad people can dance with him, but not in the way I originally expected. My initial idea, shared with John Collins, was to make a traditional techno record. Instead, what emerged feels more like rock, even though it’s a very fast-paced record for Destroyer.”
Contrary to appearances, Destroyer is not an electronica act casually dropping a rock album. It is a rock-pop project that delivers a lively, often dark but rhythmically charged set with hints of rave, electro, new music, and no wave — even threading a few moments reminiscent of the Kings of Convenience. The band has shifted toward halftime and abrupt breaks, prioritizing a dynamic listen that challenges its audience. Labyrinthitis marks a new twist in Bejar’s sound: the Destroyer imprint remains, but without a single, repeating formula.
Elegant rock
Destroyer is a central name in American indie, understood not as a fixed sound but as a broad constellation of independent artists working outside major labels, in a scattered festival, radio, and live circuit. Bejar, an Andalusian musician with Granada roots on his father’s side and a California-born mother who taught in Vancouver, built his career as a singer-songwriter in the mid-nineties. His stage name aligns with his collaborations in various bands, including The New Pornographers and Swan Lake, which later fed into the Canadian indie wave. Names like Arcade Fire and others became part of the global indie dialogue around the turn of the century.
Over the years Bejar sharpened his voice into an elegant, sophisticated rock style that suits the moment of turning forty: a period of self-check and reflection. In 2011 he released Kaputt, an album that captured his evolution into a modern crooner — bittersweet pop wrapped in jazzy textures, with lyrics carrying irony and several double meanings, all while a blazer became a signature image.
This ethical and aesthetic frame continues to inform Labyrinthitis. The album includes a track titled The States, where Bejar recalls his twenties and the months spent at bus stops with an old suitcase during a stay in Malaga in 2007. When asked what his younger self would think of him now, Bejar responds with a laugh that he might be corrupted, that his words might have sold out and he became bourgeois.
Yet Destroyer remains a relatively compact project. Bejar is a natural explorer, guided by instinct more than rationale, with John Collins acting as a kind of alchemist who overlays layer after layer of sound. Collins’s contribution is celebrated for not merely agreeing with Bejar but for reshaping ideas. This album stands as a vivid example of Collins turning Bejar’s concepts upside down, leaving a strong mark as a producer.
Spanish future
Labyrinthitis, named after a disease that affects hearing and balance, to Bejar’s medical knowledge, feels like a rare creature. He describes the work as idiosyncratic and says he often feels like a foreigner in his own voice. “I’m the singer, but the material is unfamiliar to me at times. Some lines feel rough, as if sung in a harsh voice. It’s a dark record, yet not the typical Destroyer bleakness — more cutting humor and frank jokes.”
Whether this darkness stems from the pandemic, during which many songs were written in spring 2020, or from Bejar’s personal moment, remains a topic for debate. “I’m turning fifty this year, and that milestone nudges one toward the realization that the familiar world is changing quickly. Memories fade, and you wonder if you’ll ever share a noisy moment in a crowded bar again. Those experiences, important to me, might not recur in the same way.”
Bejar also reflects on his relationship with Spain. He mentions plans to perform at Vida Festival in July and muses about spending longer periods in Spain as time goes on. He has learned much from his travels across Andalusia, Catalonia, and Madrid, and recalls a 2013 moment when he found English an imperfect language for singing, leading to an EP called Five Spanish Songs, where he covered pieces in Spanish by Mr. Chinarro — an endeavour that proved less about language than about challenging himself as a songwriter. The aim was to confront what had not yet been written.
In Labyrinthitis Bejar’s voice shifts through varied tones and modulations. The album features an instrumental theme representing the title and a track with sprawling lyrics — June — where the singer even delivers a rap. He jokes that it sounds like a blend of Tintoretto and Rammstein, while admitting that at home his listening is dominated by Bill Evans and Billie Holiday.