ken

Ken (stylized in all lowercase) is the eleventh studio album by Canadian indie rock band Destroyer, released on October 20, 2017 by Merge Records. Band Leader Dan Bejar began writing ken while on tour in Washington State. Many of the songs and sounds of the album were aesthetic callbacks to Bejar's teenage years in the mid 1980's, with loose ties to Thatcher era politics. Background Band leader Dan Bejar "lifted" the name ken from an early version of the song "The Wild Ones" by Suede. Despite sharing a title, Bejar claims that he "was not thinking about Suede when making this record" and that it was " unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is". Unlike previous records, Poison Season and Kaputt, Bejar composed most of the songs on guitar rather than on a computer. The majority of the songs on ken were written and debuted live while Bejar was touring in early 2017. In an interview with SPIN magazine, Bejar stated that recording ken felt like "singing to my teenage self" and was heavily influenced by the bands House of Love, and Church. Bejar characterizes ken as the first record where "a producer swept in," stating that many of the drum machines, minimalist rhythms, and synth patterns on tracks like "Sky's Grey" "came as a surprise to me." The song “La Regle du Jeu” became more "euro-cabaret" in the studios compared to the original demo, with Bejar commenting "All of a sudden, the song had way more fangs than I had ever imagined." Lyrics Bejar stated that ken is influenced by the "casual extremism of a young person" and his personality as a teenager while writing ken. Each song blends the themes of "madness, or disease, or violence, or decadence and depravity" that were present on other Destroyer albums, but "seem to be more constant on this album." In a press release for the album, Bejar stated that he was thinking about his experience with music leading up to the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of Great Britain while writing ken.