Destroyer are back. Two years after dropping Poison Season, the Dan Bejar-led band is set to return with a brand new album come October titled Ken. To help usher in their next release cycle, today they’ve shared a new single, and the first track off the record, an equally elegiac and twitchy ballad named “Sky’s Grey,” which you can check out in the video above.
In a press release, Bejar explained the epiphany that helped spur the creation of his latest record.
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.”
Ken is set to drop on October 20 on Merge. You can listen to the single “Sky’s Grey” above and check out the track list below.
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”
