DESTROYER

“Thief (vinyl reissue)” MERGE

May 25. Thief is the album on which Destroyer truly hit its stride. Not only did Dan Bejar offer up what was easily his best work to date; with this album, it became clear he was a songwriter who wasn’t just producing incremental batches of songs but an entire connected oeuvre. He was clearly a student of rock history but emerged as his own biggest influence. “The Way of Perpetual Roads” is so loose it swings; “City of Daughters” is as sweet a piece of power pop as any of Bejar’s contributions to the New Pornographers; and “Canadian Lover/Falcon’s Escape” remains one of Destroyer’s most enduring anthems. Lyrically, Bejar was at his sharpest, both in terms of dishing out barbs and commanding the full range of his free-flowing poetry— poignancy to punchlines with just the right amount of inscrutability to keep you listening again and again.