Artist Destroyer
Album
LABYRINTHITIS
Label
Merge/Bella Union
Year
2022
Give it a chance if you like: The New Pornographers, Animal Collective or Deerhunter
LABYRINTHITIS is the thirteenth studio album of Canadian indie rock band Destroyer, founded by frontman Dan Bejar, with a collective of band members and collaborators including John Collins and David Carswell. You may know both Dan Bejar and John Collins from The New Pornographers.
LABYRINTHITIS offers listeners a smooth and sophisticated synth-pop sound reminiscent of 1980s bands like Tears for Fears. This association that’s very evident in the album’s first track entitled “It’s in Your Heart Now’. From there, the album jumps into songs like “June” that offer listeners a disco-like vibe, while songs like “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread” and “It Takes a Thief” offer new-wave, head-bobbing dance beats.
The entire album offers a brilliantly weird musical arrangement. The listener is taken on an unexpected and experimental journey, where just when you think you’ve figured out direction of the album, it switches on you, keeping you fully engaged, if not slightly puzzled.
The album closes out with “The Last Song,”that includes soft, melancholy lyrics like “You get up, you stand up/ you pull your head on out of nooses/ You don’t do what the news says/On any given day,” providing a poetic and natural decrescendo to the album.
Overall, LABYRINTHITIS gives listeners a mix of delightfully taunting lyrics embedded in a new-wave sound. What more could you want?
