Labyrinthitis

Canadian songwriter/vocalist Dan Bejars Destroyer has gone through multiple transformations over the years, with a marked transition from guitar-driven indie rock to smoother, 80s pop-informed arrangements around the time of career highlight Kaputt in 2011. Bejars lyricism remained slippery and surreal, but subsequent records further explored synthesizer tones, funk-lite bass grooves, and grandiose production. His 13th album, Labyrinthitis, continues that slick style to some extent, but also has moments of embracing chaos and dissonance. The chorus-saturated New Order-y bass line, steady beat, and electronic percussion flourishes of the slowly unfolding album opener "Its in Your Heart Now" or the bouncy earworm "It Takes a Thief" (complete with bursts of overexcited MIDI horn sounds) feel in line with the art rock take on various eras of synth pop displayed on records like Ken or Labyrinthitis immediate predecessor, Have We Met. Throughout the album, however, there are moments when Bejar pushes his songs idiosyncratic quirks over the edge into places the band has never gone before. The most notable example of this is "June," a song that begins as a relaxed sophisti-pop tune built around fluid bass grooves and friendly synth pads. At just a little bit past the midway point of the six-and-a-half-minute song, however, the instrumentation breaks down and Bejars voice overtakes the mix with a vehement spoken-word oration that lasts the remainder of the tune. His scattered, psychedelic words twist as his voice goes through quick-shifting moments of pitch shifting, distortion, and digital deconstruction. Its jarring yet engaging, somehow fitting with the drunken flow of the rest of the song. Bejar toys with disorienting riffs and moments of muscular drum thrashing on "Tintoretto, Its for You," and on the instrumental titular track he gets into field recordings, foreboding ambient synths, and a melody strung together by chopped-up vocal samples. The album mostly stays on the digestible side of experimentalism, and Bejars hallucinatory lyrical narratives sail in on melodic hooks more often than not. The cheekily titled "The Last Song" (yes, the final song on the album) even reverts to the cerebral indie folk style of Destroyers earliest work, with spare electric guitar serving as the only support for some of the albums most direct, cutting, and hilarious lyrics. Labyrinthitis is another exciting step forward in Destroyers never-ending evolution, delivering pleasant confusion and unexpected choices along with the kind of fractured but magical songwriting of which only Bejar is capable. ~ Fred Thomas