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Aug 08, 2017 Suede By Christopher Roberts

Destroyer (the project of Dan Bejar) have announced a new album, ken, and shared a lyric video for its first single, “Sky’s Grey.” Ken is due out October 20 via Merge. As Bejar explains in the quote below, its title was inspired by the Suede single “The Wild Ones” (from 1994’s Dog Man Star), which is below too. Below also is “Sky’s Grey,” followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art and Destroyer’s upcoming tour dates.

Bejar had this to say about the album, and the Suede connection, in a press release: “Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for ‘The Wild Ones’ (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was ‘Ken.’ I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe ‘The Wild Ones’ speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think ‘ken’ also means ‘to know.’”

The album is the follow-up to 2015’s Poison Season. Josh Wells of Black Mountain (who has been the drummer in Destroyer since 2012) produced ken, which was recorded in its entirety in the jam space/studio space called The Balloon Factory. Unlike Poison Season, ken wasn’t recorded by the whole band at the same time, but everyone in the Destroyer band does show up on the album.

The album will be available as a deluxe LP pressed on opaque yellow vinyl. The deluxe edition will include a bonus 7-inch single on black vinyl that contains solo acoustic versions of the album tracks “A Light Travels Down the Catwalk” and “Stay Lost.”

ken Tracklist:

1 Sky’s Grey
2 In the Morning
3 Tinseltown Swimming in Blood
4 Cover From the Sun
5 Saw You at the Hospital
6 A Light Travels Down the Catwalk
7 Rome
8 Sometimes In the World
9 Ivory Coast
10 Stay Lost
11 La Regle du Jeu

Destroyer EU Tour Dates:

11/12 - Hamburg, DE - Kampnagel
11/13 - Aarhus, DK - Voxhall
11/14 - Oslo, NO - John Dee
11/15 - Stockholm, SE - Fasching
11/16 - Copenhagen, DN - Vega
11/16 - Berlin, DE - Festsaal Kreuzberg
11/19 - Dusseldorf, DE - New Fall Festival
11/21 - Zurich, CH - Rote Fabrik
11/22 - Montpellier, FR - Le Rockstore
11/23 - San Sebastian, ES - Teatro Victoria Eugenia
11/24 - Lisbon, PR - Mexefest
11/25 - Madrid, ES - Teatro Barcelo
11/26 - Valencia, ES - La Rambleta
11/27 - Barcelona, ES - Sala Bikini
11/29 - Lille, FR - L’ Aeronef
11/30 - Brighton, UK - Patterns
12/01 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
12/03 - Dublin, IE - Button Factory
12/05 - Glasgow, UK - CCA (270)
12/06 - Newcastle, UK - The Cluny
12/07 - London, UK - Scala
12/08 - Paris, FR - Petit Bain
12/09 - Amsterdam, NE - Paradiso Noord
12/10 - Brussels, BE - Botanique Brussels

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