Successful artists often confess that they feel like they’re getting away with something by being able to play music, act, or tell jokes for a living. Given that Dan Bejar has been making music as Destroyer for almost 30 years, it’s timely of the Vancouver artist to release an album called Dan’s Boogie, with the operative word “boogie” referring to a hustle or scam.

Accordingly, a tense wariness – paranoia, even – pervades Dan’s Boogie, Bejar’s fourteenth Destroyer full-length to date. On the lushly arranged “Cataract Time,” he wanders the streets under the perceived glare of a watchful eye that sees through his imposter syndrome. “Cataract Time” moves with a whimsical saxophone-led grace that belies the song’s undercurrent of anxiety.

Dan’s Boogie vividly conveys a sense of feeling simultaneously trapped and disassociated. The empty, sterile green room on the album cover, which resembles Lumon office space in an episode of Severance, says, muted, “Where am I?” or “I’m not there.”

But Bejar has never been easy to pin down or decode. “Who do I turn to? Where do I run to?” he asks before wondering further, “What have I done to serve this blissful sensation?” on the ornate, cascading title track. Either he’s being characteristically sarcastic or he truly is spinning out. And on “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World,” he seems to have bottomed out. There’s the expression “talking into the wind,” but not only does Dan’s Boogie carry the energy of a man quietly rambling to himself, on this majestic song, he talks to the wind. “I lie to myself / I lie down on the breeze / I whisper, ‘Hey, breeze, where ya going?’” he sings before querying at the end of the verse, “Absent friends, where’d you go?”

Dan’s Boogie breaks through the isolation, if only momentarily, with a guest appearance by Simone Schmidt, aka Fiver, featuring their hearty, reverberant voice on the bongo-and-piano-focused “Bologna.” Taking centre stage here, their presence comes like a grounding force for Bejar.

Arguably, Dan’s Boogie is Bejar’s most graceful album yet. Many of the new songs germinated as piano compositions and, combined with his interest in jazz, the only music he says he listens to, the results, brought to life by returning longtime producer and collaborator John Collins, grew into loungy jazz ballads accented with dreamy synths and grand guitars. Bejar sings with an aged weariness in his voice that carries a vintage quality and adds a vintage patina to the album’s mood. The new songs are more naval gazing in terms of Bejar’s interior life, but knowing the brilliance of the surroundings he’s rendered over the years through lyrics and instrumentals, it’s possible to fill in the blanks and imagine a full picture, bright and expressive despite the heavy introspection.

Pre-order Dan’s Boogie by Destroyer HERE