Destroyer

A rotating collective

Destroyer is Dan Bejar, born in Vancouver in 1972, and whoever he is working with; the line-up has turned over many times. Bejar says he wanted a rock and roll name and did not know a Kiss album called Destroyer existed when he chose it in 1995. The first record, We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge (1996), was lo-fi home recording, followed by the cassette compilation Ideas for Songs (1997), City of Daughters (1998), Thief (2000, the first with a backing band on every track) and Streethawk: A Seduction (2001), which Pitchfork later gave 9.1 in retrospect.

This Night (2002) was a dramatic change of style with a mixed reception, and Your Blues (2004) used mostly MIDI instruments, which Bejar called European blues. Destroyer's Rubies (2006) was the first with a live band and the most accessible record up to then; Trouble in Dreams (2008) was, he said, the hardest to make. He has also sung with the New Pornographers, in Swan Lake with Carey Mercer and Spencer Krug, and with Sydney Hermant in Hello, Blue Roses; Hermant has done cover art for several Destroyer records.

Kaputt

Kaputt, recorded between 2008 and 2010 and released on January 25, 2011 on Merge and Dead Oceans, was produced by John Collins and David Carswell at their JC/DC studio in Vancouver. Bejar has said it was written quickly, in a condensed period, and then built and scrapped over about a year and a half; the players blasted away and the horns, backing vocals and many guitar parts were largely improvised. The aim was what the band called ambient disco, though, he told The Line of Best Fit, they were three rock guys who did not really know what that is, and they listened to The Wall and The Joshua Tree for reference. He named New Order, the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Roxy Music's Avalon as influences. He told Cherwell it was the first pop record he had ever made.

Metacritic scored it 84 from 38 reviews; Pitchfork gave it 8.8 and placed it second among 2011's albums, the Guardian's Alexis Petridis called it an open love letter to a vanished pop era, and it was shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize. Stereogum's ten-year retrospective calls it the dividing line, before Kaputt and after Kaputt, and ties it to Rhye, The War on Drugs and Carly Rae Jepsen's E-MO-TION.

Since

Later records include Poison Season (2015, live band and strings), ken (2017), Have We Met (2020), Labyrinthitis (2022, shortlisted for the 2023 Polaris) and Dan's Boogie (2025). Setlist.fm lists 581 shows between 2000 and 2026.