Destroyer – Labyrinthitis [LP]

Description:

LABYRINTHITIS brims with mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejars notes woven through by allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing. The record circuitously draws ever inward, each turn offering giddy surprise, anxious esoterica, and thumping emotionality at equal odds. Do you remember the mythic beast? Bejar asks at the outset of Tintoretto, Its for You, the albums first single, casting torchlight over the labyrinths corridors. Delivered in a Marlene Dietrich smolder, Bejars lyrical menace seeps like smoke through the brazen marchs woozy synths and dizzied guitar. Theres some character here that feels new to me, a low drawl, an evening gown draped over a piano, Bejar says of the song. Throughout, LABYRINTHITIS insists that everythings not all right, but that even isolation and dissolution can be a source of joystepping into the sunlight at the other end of the maze in your ear, Bejar strolling alongside like a wildmaned,
leisure-suited minotaur.

More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of It Takes a Thief to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. John is in his 50s, and Im almost there, but we used to go to clubs, Bejar laughs. Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco.

Bejar and Collins conducted their questing in the height of isolation, Collins on the remote Galiano Island and Bejar in nearby Vancouver, sending ideas back and forth when restrictions didnt allow them to meet. From the vocal manipulation to the layered electronics, making this record pushed us to a new place, and reaching that place felt stressful, Bejar recalls. But I trust that that stress is a good feeling. That cuddly anxiety excels in tracks like Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread.

Lyrically, LABYRINTHITIS embraces a widescreen maximalism, blocks of text dotted with subversions and hedges. Building from the koans of Have We Met, Bejar continues to carve his words precisely, toying with expectations and staid symbols, while Collins production reconstructs the pieces into a unified whole. Even though everyone recorded in their own isolated corners, this is the most band record that weve done in the last few years, Bejar says. Everythings manipulated, but the band is really present, and our plans wound up betrayed by what the tracks wanted. Ive written 300, 400 songs in my adult lifeI dont know how to do anything elsebut this album feels like a breakthrough into new territory.

That unprepared synchronicity and mutual discovery shines on June, a six-and-a-halfminute track that features a blend of funk bass, fluttering synth, and charred poetry recitation. While Bejar initially envisioned LABYRINTHITIS as a straight dance record (just like Donna Summers greatest hits), the end of June explodes that simplicity into a million shining pieces, finding joy in mutual discovery instead of isolated certainty. LABYRINTHITIS closes on The Last Song, Bejar singing and strumming all alone, a gentle yet no more settled exodus out of the fractured dance party. I try and sneak in sweet moments where I can, Bejar laughs. As LABYRINTHITIS closes, the reorienting vertigo lingers, its implacable aura and bewitching lyrics wriggling ever deeper into the mind.

Tracklist:

1. Its in Your Heart Now
2. Suffer
3. June
4. All My Pretty Dresses
5. Tintoretto, Its for You
6. Labyrinthitis
7. Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread
8. It Takes a Thief
9. The States
10. The Last Song

UPC: 673855078915
Label: Merge Records
Release Date: 3.25.22
Format: Vinyl