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Thirty years ago,Dan Bejarpicked up an acoustic guitar and started performing as Destroyer.
So where would Bejar go from here?
First, nowhere: For more than a year, he stopped writing music.
Eventually, he found his answer in front of the piano.
This was about balladry and getting back into chord progressions, he says.
Those sessions led to the bands 14th album, fittingly titledDans Boogie.
You stopped writing songs for over a year afterLabyrinthitis.
Where did that idea come from?From reality?
It came from just not doing it.
It did feel like an extra-long time.
I noticed some people, especially people my age, take years between records.
But Im not used to that.
Going five years without writing a song would be panic-inducing for me.
So one year was a good exercise.
I eventually forced myself to sit down at the piano.
Not for very long.
I wasntthatforceful, I did it for about a week or two, and wrote these exercises.
The hubristic side of me thinks that Destroyer is just an angle that you could play anything.
That could be something to aim for.
But thats harder said than done.
Ive never really done anything else.
Singings got its hooks in me.
Do you watch sports?
Because I thought of the song Crimson Tide onHave We Mettoo.I dont keep up with sports at all.
I wasnt sure what I was gonna say next, which is not at all typical for Destroyer.
So what you hear is me coming up with it.
Cataract Time was the exact opposite.
And it was this very emotional song.
It seemed to give it all away, way more than most Destroyer songs do.
Cataract Time is such an indelible phrase.
I was thinking of other languages and their use of the word cataract.
Like, in French, its a rupture, its a waterfall.
Hes like, Open up, you cataracts.
And its this moment of reckoning, where you realize that the world is broken.
There are lines about horses on two different songs on the album.Really?
I dont think I was going through a horses phase.
Those lines are pretty different.
And whatever a horses ass might mean, because thats also an expression for an idiot.
The other one was kind of more personal.
Talking about the coffers: Theres nothing in there / Everythings been burned / I remix horses.
Its an older piece of writing, too.
Thats cobbled from somewhere.
I was also maybe thinking about I Break Horses, which is a Bill Callahan song.
I feel like it was just my brain riffing on that shit.
If I ever go through a real cowboy phase, people are gonna know it.
With Bologna, you brought in another singer, Fivers Simone Schmidt, which you dont often do.
So, the desire to play with that is real.
In some ways, its more of a traditional song, like a torch song.
And maybe the sad case is thats not my forte.
There was something tokenly sleazy about it, or kind of glib.
We should talk about the title of the album.
Dans Boogie was a placeholder for that song.
And then, as the album continued, it started to encompass the sprawl as a whole.
I also like titles with peoples names in them.
You started performing as Destroyer 30 years ago this year.
Hows that for you to think about?Its insane.
I mean, I dont remember being 22.
The idea that this is something that has structured my life for that long is pretty weird.
But not as weird as the rigmarole of the music industry.
Youre just kind of cruising down the middle, doing a thing for decades.
Usually people go up or go away.
Its strange to be still in the trenches, but everyone you know is gone.
Is it still just forward from here?How I do it is so unconscious.
I dont know what Im doing.
Like, I really dont.
I know Im writing.
Slowly, slower than I ever have, but Im never gonna stop doing that.
I still get off on it.
But nothing gets easier as you get older.
