KEN (LP)

Vinyl LP pressing, includes digital download. Of his 12th studio album and its enigmatic title, DestroyerAEs Dan Bejar offers the following: Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for oThe Wild Oneso (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was oKen.o 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. ItAEs 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 oThe Wild Oneso speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think okeno also means oto know.o ken was produced by Josh Wells of Black Mountain, who has been the drummer in Destroyer since 2012. The album was recorded in its entirety in the jam space/studio space that the group calls The Balloon Factory. However, unlike Poison Season, ken was not recorded as a obando record, though everyone in the band does make an appearance.