Dan Bejar revels in density. Within Destroyer, his songs pack allusions and contort wordplay through his distinct nasal pitch and often elaborate arrangements. Last year’s 11th LP, Ken, offered a different vision from the Vancouver songwriter, more sparse and direct in both sentiment and sound as it braced with Eighties-inspired synth rhythms.: “I can’t imagine writing another batch of songs like this again,” confides Bejar. “It just seems incongruous with what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years. I like it, but it just seems like a special set of songs in a lot of ways. It’s almost kind of goth, or as goth as Destroyer’s ever going to get.: “Lyrically, I feel like the songs have kind of a darkness to them, a kind of darkness that’s different to the pleasant kind of melancholia that Destroyer songs usually have to them. There’s a handful of them that are more menacing and clenched. I don’t really know where that was coming from.: “The only thing I really sense when I scan Ken is there’s a really specific definition to the world that seems to be diseased and hostile and violent, or maybe decaying.”: The sound partially attributes to Bejar’s extensive solo touring over the past year, the most he’s ever done. Returning now with an eightpiece band, his filling out the songs provides a new perspective on them.: “It feels in some ways the most outside of me, because I don’t see myself as a person on the verge of collapse,” he laughs. “As I get older, the world seems more confusing and demented. I feel like that’s a real normal thing that happens, but maybe it just happens slightly quicker when you’re in show business.”