Destroyer's Dan Bejar on Conflict, His Fifties, and Sparring with the World

Destroyer's Dan Bejar on Conflict, His Fifties, and Sparring with the World
Photo by Nicholas Bragg

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OK, let's get down to business: Destroyer godhead Dan Bejar is a legend when it comes to the last 35 years of indie rock and recorded music in general, his catalogue represents quite possibly the strongest run of any living artist in the genre period, especially when it comes to quantity. He simply does not miss, and yet I feel like he's outdone himself with Destroyer's latest record Dan's Boogie. I've interviewed Dan a few times now—once for a website that doesn't exist anymore, and once right here for the newsletter back in 2022—and it was an absolute delight to hop back on a call with him last month and hash a ton of stuff out. Read on:

I love this new record. I found myself thinking about Rubies once or twice while listening to it. How often are you revisiting older recordings at this point? I know some people have a really hard time doing so.
I listen to a record a lot when I'm working on mixes and when I get the master, but by this point [of the promotional cycle], the record is dead to me. It's not like it's a dead thing that holds no life, but I won't be listening to it. I do listen to things when it's like, "How the fuck am I going to play this live on stage?"

In the past, I've flinched a little bit about when something sounds too much like something that we've done before. This record is probably the first one where I didn't think about that at all. I really don't care. It's probably something to do with the first record I've made in my fifties. You just stop caring—or, what you care about is so much more severe and serious than whether this sounds like Your Blues that caring about it just gets lost in the shuffle.

Someone else said [Dan's Boogie] kind of reminded them of Rubies. I don't totally get it. To me, it reminds me of a pretty solid mashup of Poison Season and Your Blues. But also, Rubies did not sound like a record that John Collins had much to do with at all, because he didn't play on it or produce it. It very much sounds like the kind of record that me and Dave Carswell would do, much like Poison Season. It doesn't sound cooked, and even though [Dan's Boogie] is more relaxed than the last couple records, it's still cooked beyond belief. When you throw headphones on, the sound design element is pretty in your face, as far as I'm concerned.

But maybe you mean something different than just the sound of it, because I feel like when I listen to it, I sound pretty relaxed and very at home in my skin. And there's one other record that I really associate that with—and that's Destroyer's
Rubies
.

You're 52 now, as you previously gestured to. How's being in your fifties going?
Things feel really different. You're not supposed to really talk about it—you're supposed to be defeatist or something. In showbiz, you're not even supposed to mention your age, because the worst thing you can possibly do is be old—unless you're, like, really famous, in which case whatever industry you concocted around yourself can just absorb that into the narrative. But that's not my case.

I think it played into the record in some ways that I guess I've maybe already talked about. You slow down, you become physically weaker. You can't take the same kind of hammering. You become more disoriented in the world. The world as you know it is erased. People that you knew are gone, buildings that you once would find your way home using are gone. People use words in a language that you think is your first language, but you don't understand what they're saying. Classic old-guy stuff.

This record is written very much from that vantage point. Also, just the fact that it was such a struggle to write the record—life is a struggle, but the one thing that's never been a struggle for me is writing songs, you know? I've just spit them out. I'm not saying that hasn't slowed down since like the '90s and 2000s, but the fallow period for this one was long, and it never went away. I did something I'd never done before, which was to force myself to sit down and compose and search through scraps of what I thought was nothing to see if there is something that could be sung over top—real workmanlike stuff that I'd always heard about people doing, like punching the clock.

I was always like, "If it comes to that, it's gonna be the end of me, because I'm pretty sure that's not what I'm good at." But I think it turned out okay. I'm actually feeling good about the songs having been born like that. They still have a breeziness to them, but there's a more conscious approach to composing them, which is different maybe. With Have We Met, it was like, "Let's make a true pop-sounding record." I don't even know what that means, nor did John, and we didn't make a record that sounded like that. With Labyrinthitis, it was like, "Let's make a house record." Obviously, we didn't do that either. But those provide an impetus to get going, and there was never that kind of speech with this record. It was just, "Here's the songs. I have the order for them from beginning to end before we even start working on it. Let's just make them sound like things that we like."

At this point, we all have our pretty distinct styles—whether it's me as a songwriter, or John as someone who mixes and produces records and plays bass on them, or Josh who plays drums on the record, or Nick who plays electric guitar, or Teddy's piano style. But it's all very Destroyer-y, and to me this is the most Destroyer-y record we've done in a very long time, in a way that a couple years ago I would've cringed at it. But now, I'm ready to own it.

In terms of everyone you work with, where does conflict come in and how do you deal with it?
You have to remember, you're dealing with a bunch of Gen X Canadian dudes—very non-verbal. If there's a trouble on a song, well, okay, let's start from scratch. A song's not sounding or doesn't work out, it goes away.

As far as the working process though, no one comes into the studio these days. I send demos to John and he'll work up these more functional, fuller-sounding templates, and I'll go over to his place on the island and we'll work on the songs and be like, "Yeah, this is the direction." Then, we send them out to the band, who will play on certain songs, but with very little direction. Direction is just not something that happens in Destroyer. If you need direction, you're probably not going to be around for the next record or show.

Then it's just a matter of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. No one's precious about anything—or maybe they are and they hate my guts, or John's guts, and I just don't know it yet. But we chop shit up. Songs completely change directions because of the things that people play, or people play something and it just won't get used at all. It's really just all about the song, you know? It's egoless, aside from me.

The first thing I said to John when we started working on this record was, "I'm sorry, but the vocals are going to be really loud and clear. I'm going to go into a studio with a fancy microphone, a fancy preamp, and a fancy compressor for the first time in 10 years, and I'm going to sing them and you're not gonna have an excuse to fucking fry them, or make them sound insane, or bury them in a strange mix." But that's throwing the gauntlet down. The only real conflict that can happen is between me and [John], but we just don't have anything to prove, really. We're just good.

Sometimes, with Labyrinthitis, there was conflict. The first thing we did on this record is we turned to each other and were like, "I don't really know about that last record," which felt really good. Usually, you're not supposed to have those revelations—and if you do, you're not supposed to say them out loud. We said it out loud at the same time. There were things about it that were beyond our control. There was a travel ban, so I couldn't actually be with John working on the record. With this one, I was there a lot—like, a lot a lot. It's the most I've been in the studio with him since Kaputt.

But there were obstacles with Labyrinthitis, and I think it kind of shows in that record. It's cool-sounding—it's, like, really weird sounding—but it's harsh. It's all over the place in a sonically exciting way, but I'm not sure it always serves the songs, and I'm not even sure about all the songs. That's about as close to conflict as I can think of. The band has been pretty static now for a while. It's more or less the same people for the last 13 years. If a song's bugging us, we just don't play it—and by us, I mean them. I'll be like, "Should we try this one?" If someone's like, "Nah, I don't really want to," then we don't do it. I'm not the leader of that band—I'm the singer.

This is the third time I've interviewed you now, and one thing that stands out to me when you talk about your music is that you do have a lack of ego about it. You've also made plenty of records that are situated in the sounds of glam, which itself has notions of theatricality and persona at its core. You also mentioned that you're not actually famous—but, I do think that you've managed to build an audience out of younger generations over the years as well. Talk to me about navigating all of that.
I can address two things very simply, and then maybe try and think about the more nuanced answer. First, you would have to say me being egoless, you would have to really take that with a grain of salt since the thing that I said right before that is that at the very beginning of working on the record, I know exactly how the song that I sing goes from beginning to end. If I can't sing the first word to the last word and the vocals go unchanged while all the sonic stuff swirls around it and shifts...I'm not lying when I say the vocals, from day one, are "Do not alter." I go in and I say that everything that I'm saying and doing must be as loud in the mix as the kick drum. It's got to be really loud. You have to reckon with me and what I'm saying no matter what. There's no way around it. I'm not sure that's an egoless act, as an artist. The other people who play on Destroyer records wouldn't say that's the case either. The entire challenge of John's arc in this band is based around a bit of a throwdown, because I must think I have something really worth saying to have that be the #1 mandate of a Destroyer song.

That being said, I think I come from a generation where we just weren't really comfortable talking about that stuff. Obviously, the British glam rock of the early '70s is what literally launched me into getting really into making rock music. But the theatricality and persona stuff was what I was least interested in, and that's kind of actually been a big problem for me, because there's this dissonance of what I'm into in music and art and how I present myself to the world. It doesn't actually make a ton of sense. Part of it is that I don't want to present myself to the world, and maybe you can hear that in the music and in the songs themselves.

When it comes to degrees of fame—when I say famous, I only mean one word: Rich. When I see the word "famous," I just see the word "rich." I guess there's versions of "infamous"—like, you're famous because you're in jail, or something like that. But the world, especially right now, it's just economic—and I'm not rich, so I can't afford to build a cultural apparatus around myself to create an aura of lasting genius, which is generally how it works. All I can do is put out records and play shows, and if people like them, they like them. If they don't, then they don't.

But it's a good question, because it's complicated. I wish I was better at presenting my ego to the world in a more seamless way. I also would say that it's a little dangerous to conflate theatricality and artifice with ego. Just because there's a very strong persona doesn't necessarily mean there's a bonafide personality that takes up a lot of space. I'm sure that, in day-to-day life, James Taylor took up a lot more air in the room than Marc Bolan did. And it's an English thing, which Americans don't understand. They still don't really get glam rock. And there's all sorts of stuff that English people try to understand about American culture that they're obsessed with but get wrong at the same time.

You mentioned the notion of Gen X Canadian guys being non-verbal. Therapy obviously forces you to become verbal in a very explicit and real sense. Is that something you've had experience with?
No, it's not, but it makes me nervous even to talk about it, which means I probably need therapy. In the last few years, I've had more typical anxiety and nervous breakdown moments—weird episodes on stage, all the stuff that you think you have a handle on but maybe starts to get the better of you once you reach a certain age. But I don't have any experience with therapy, and I'm feeling pretty good these days. I like to hear about it, though. I know that's kind of perverse, and not what therapy is for, but when people talk about what they do in therapy, I'm kind of at the edge of my seat.

I understand that. Based on experience with others, I've come to the conclusion that, when I hear somebody talk a lot about what's going on in therapy, I'm not sure the therapy is working.
Yeah, yeah, I get that too—but aside from whether it's working or not, I'm just fascinated by the narrative arc.

I read in the bio that you made a New Year's resolution at one point to play the piano for an hour every day. Are you usually a resolutions guy in general?
No. I've had some ridiculous ones, and they're usually really easy. I've had an antagonistic relationship with instruments since I stopped playing guitar in 2007—I circled them, we stared at each other out of the corner of our eyes like it was The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It was a showdown. "I know I'm gonna have to reckon with you at some point, but not today." For the last record, the showdown kept getting tenser until it became this mental hurdle that I was not familiar with. I was like, "I'd rather punch myself in the face than work on a song."

At the same time, all I do is listen to piano trios and solo piano—jazz vocalists, Mal Waldron, Bill Evans. I listen to Ryiuchi Sakamoto playing the piano. I don't know if it was actually a New Year's resolution, but it was January and I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna go into the studio in my garage and sit down and play like how other people who play instruments do it and see what comes out." Just playing for the sake of playing, not for the sake of having an end product. I did it for about a week, maybe two weeks. I don't know if I did it every day, but it wasn't for very long—like, an hour—and I cheated and started recording on my phone. From those first couple of weeks in January—probably less than that—that birthed, I don't know, six or seven of the songs off this new record.

It just became a work ethic thing—which was disdainful to me for so long. But I figured I might try and pursue it.

You mentioned you've had some ridiculous resolutions. Anything specific that comes to mind?
Nothing worth repeating.

I had a resolution last year to eat more fresh bread.
Excellent resolution.

I kept at it for two months. Honestly, the place I went to get fresh bread, they stopped making my favorite loaf of bread. I fell off real quick after that.
I think I'm going to copy you for 2026.

Joseph Shabason plays sax on "Travel Light." I recently talked to Nick Krgovich for the newsletter about him and Joseph working together and the sound they have. I told him that I hear a lot of Kaputt in what Nick does, and he was telling me about how while he was finishing On Sunset, Kaputt came out and he was like, "Ah, Dan kind of nailed this sound before I was able to put this record out."
On Sunset is really hard to find. It's very good, Nick's a great songwriter. I think if you were to ask John to be honest about what his favorite record that he's mixed, I don't think he would say Mass Romantic, Twin Cinema, Your Blues, or Kaputt. I'm pretty sure he would say On Sunset. I think it's some of John's best work. Nick writes really good songs, but I think John did a really good job on that one.

Joseph fits really well with what Nick does, and he fits really well with what you do, too. What do you think his X factor is?
It's interesting, because what we get from Joseph is still very much like when we first heard him blow his horn in 2008. I find Eros coursing through his veins when he plays the sax. But he's become a sophisticated, textural musician and producer, and a very good engineer. For Kaputt, he came in without having heard the songs and just fucking soloed for four hours over every last thing. Later on, that got sliced and diced, but it was all so good that we ended up using way more than we expected to.

Just focusing on him playing very intuitive melodic lines on a tenor sax is not really even half the story with that guy. In 2009, when I was starting work on Kaputt, I was into New Age sounds and ECM-style jazz that was and maybe still is kind of frowned upon, as well as sax from the '70s. I associated the sax with Roxy Music, because I love Roxy Music. Lou Reed uses a sax, and Joni Mitchell—people who are giants for me. But that wasn't Joseph's world at the time. I mean, he's also 10 years younger than the rest of us. He maybe soured on the sax at that point,
and [working on Kaputt] was kind of an entry point back in for him—the idea of the sax as an ambient instrument, as opposed to just like a functional jazz tool.

You watch a lot of movies? Have you seen anything you like lately?
I do watch a lot of movies. I'm trying to think of something that I've really liked lately, though. I feel like it's tough out there. There was a Romanian movie called...

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World? I loved that one.
Yeah, it was fantastic. There's also a movie that was quite modest and slight, but I'd written the director off for so long that I was shocked that I liked it so much: Perfect Days by Wim Wenders.

I still haven't seen that one.
I really like it. I was not expecting anything, and I was like, "Wow, I really loved that movie." Then there's this one from a couple years ago that just blew my mind from this Catalonian director called Pacifiction.

I love that one. One of the films of the decade for me, honestly.
For me, right now, that's the film to beat in the 2020s. It's incredible.

I might agree with you on that. Albert Serra's new one is actually coming out pretty soon.
I don't know when that will hit Vancouver. We get everything so late. But I'm very excited for it.

So am I. Last time we talked, we were talking about coming out of the world post-lockdown, and something you said to me that really resonated was the world feeling like a foreign and hostile place, and how that might just be how things feel like forever now.
I think I kind of cursed myself when I said that to you. I remember thinking then,
"When this lifts—if this lifts—it's going to be like a giant party, but I'm not going to be invited back to the party. I feel like this strange COVID thing that happened is the cutoff—the line in the sand for me as an active participant in society. That's not the case, but I swear that feeling got inside of me and lasted for 2022 and 2023.
It was something I wrestled with, and only in the making of Dan's Boogie did I start to squirrel my way out of that. Now I'm feeling like a bit more like my old self—like I can spar with the world again and hold my own.

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