Destroyer settle into a more familiar, predictable groove on their 14th album Dan’s Boogie.
For a long time, being a Destroyer fan has meant having no idea what to expect with each new release. Every Destroyer album sounds distinctly different from its predecessor in some way. For example, the dance beats of 2022’s Labyrinthitis are nowhere to be found on 2020’s more scaled-back effort Have We Met?
14 albums in, however, Destroyer seems to have settled into a somewhat more predictable groove on Dan’s Boogie. While the band’s recent run has often made fans think “wow, they haven’t done anything like this before!,” the tracks on Dan’s Boogie are more likely to elicit comparisons to the band’s previous works. This isn’t much of a problem, given Destroyer’s penchant for making excellent albums, and Dan’s Boogie is another accomplished addition to the lineup. The only difference is this time around, it’s just a more familiar-sounding one.
I’m not alone in thinking Dan’s Boogie rehashes previous sounds. The band’s frontman Dan Bejar himself said, “In a lot of ways, it’s a Poison Season/Your Blues mash-up, and I’m not freaked out by that. It sounds like us, and it doesn’t need to be some concept or some bold new step forward.” To his credit, when you hear the synthesized strings and MIDI effects on “The Ignoramus of Love,” you’ll immediately recall how much these defined Destroyer’s 2004 album Your Blues. Bejar enlists Simone Schmidt (who makes music under the name Fiver) as a guest vocalist on the track “Bologna,” and the delivery of their vocal duet over some very hip sounding bongos and fleeting piano notes evokes the band’s 2011 breakthrough Kaputt. Similarly, the way the album’s longest and arguably best track “Cataract Time” meanders over eight minutes borrows techniques from Kaputt’s closing opus “Bay of Pigs (Detail),” and its extended outro recalls the best parts of the jazzy Poison Season.
If the length of “Cataract Time” is an asset, then brevity becomes something of a liability on Dan’s Boogie. The minute-long track “I Materialize” is played as a gimmick, starting like any other track before abruptly cutting off as Bejar sings “no it never stops, never stops, n-n-n-never stop!” It’s a bit of an annoying addition that mostly makes you shrug and think “well, that was weird.” Slightly longer and far more straightforward, the closing track “Travel Light” consists solely of Bejar singing over a piano. However, its minimalism and two and half minute length make it a bit of a retread of Labyrinthitis’ closing track “The Last Song,” which is honestly is more memorable of the two. At roughly 37 minutes, Dan’s Boogie is Destroyer’s second-shortest studio album since their 1996 debut, and you may feel a sense of “that’s it?” when it’s over.
Later in the album, “Sun Meet Snow” starts with minimal synthesizer and Bejar’s prose, and then more and more instruments are quickly added until it becomes an overwhelming cacophony of drums, piano, horns, and guitar all vying for attention. It’s the closest Dan’s Boogie gets to the chaos of “June” from Labyrinthitis. Bejar and Collins don’t always trend towards experimentation, however—they show off their accessible side on the album as well. It can be hard to imagine Destroyer making pop songs, but it’s hard to think of how else to describe “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World.” A quick tempo, upbeat track in the vein of “Cover From the Sun” off ken, it brims with synthesizer, a drum beat that sounds like handclaps, and backing vocal “ba-da-das.” It’s a great song, and its sunny feel contrasts nicely with Bejar reciting lines like “A priest mistakes me for a priest mistakes me for a Houston Rocket validating snow” in a deadpan manner.
Bejar described Dan’s Boogie as “the most Destroyer-y sounding Destroyer record in a long time,” and that really just kind of sums it up. It doesn’t push any boundaries or try to reach into any new genres, nor does it intend to do so. There’s no shortage of bands who have stayed remarkably consistent over the decades (see: Spoon, the Hives, Band of Horses), and if Destroyer decides to reuse old styles and techniques, you at least know their acclaimed and extensive back catalogue provides almost limitless winning formulas. That said, after so long expecting something new with every album, the familiarity of Dan’s Boogie may take some adjusting.
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