Review Rock music Rock music

Destroyer

Labyrinthitis

Bella Union • 2022

Dan Bejar was young once, too. At least that’s what he sounds like when he talks about how he used to go clubbing back in the day. At the same time, the average song by his band Destroyer sounds more like a soft rock experience for the moderate middle-aged person. And the opener on their new album »Labyrinthitis« does very little to dispel this stereotype and comes across softer than velvet and at most sips at its drink tentatively. What Bejar already knows, but the listeners don’t is that it’s going to be a long night. That’s because Bejar wants to get back on the dance floor. He rocks and rolls to the post-disco of »Eat The Wine, Drink The Bread« until the words echo through the aisles, flirts with something that could also be a Daft Punk collaboration on »The States« and combines funk guitar and spoken word in »June«, before he thievishly squints at 80s Madonna. Since the going on fifty-year-old with the whingeing voice can’t or won’t keep this pace up for the whole album, there are always phases of respite. For example, the purely instrumental title track features drum loops and samplers that help the listener to unwind electronically. Three songs even scratch the seven-minute mark with their expansive instrumental hips. Otherwise, the vocal performances have a relaxed elegance about them that don’t allow the smell of sweat to permeate the disco. Only the single »Tintoretto, It’s For You« briefly makes a ruckus and lets a synthesiser commando and battering ram drums crash through the door – not unstylishly, but somewhat irritatingly. When Bejar cynically declares in »The Last Song«: »You’re just another person that moves to L.A.«, this dirge to thousands and thousands of youthful dreams hurts, but also liberates with its indifference. The last one to leave should turns off the lights as Dan Bejar should know. After all, he was young once.