Destroyer's Dan Bejar in this undated handout photo. After a furiously prolific and wilfully eccentric 15 years in music, Destroyer's Dan Bejar followed the biggest hit of his career with the biggest break of his career. That hit was 2011's "Kaputt," a painterly masterstroke of soft pop that earned critical adoration, nominations for a Juno Award and the Polaris Music Prize, and the attention of an international audience who had otherwise perhaps heard Bejar only in his role as the New Pornographers' secondary songwriter. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Fabiola Carranza

TORONTO - After a furiously prolific and wilfully eccentric 15 years in music, Destroyer's Dan Bejar followed the biggest hit of his career with the longest break of his career.

That hit was 2011's "Kaputt," a painterly masterstroke of soft pop that earned critical adoration, nominations for a Juno Award and the Polaris Music Prize, and the attention of an international audience who had otherwise perhaps heard Bejar only in his role as the New Pornographers' star left-fielder.

Instead of quickly capitalizing on his newly puffed profile, Bejar spent more than four and a half years crafting the followup "Poison Season," out Aug. 28.

It was just enough time, the Vancouver native figures, for most people to have forgotten about him.

"To me, that's like an indie rock generation," he said recently. "I'm six months short of this record being a complete stranger to the world.

"I assume people who listened to 'Kaputt' have completely stopped listening to music, if I'm familiar with how things work.

"So I've almost arranged it so I cannot bank on any previous success."

And yet, "Poison Season" wouldn't have been possible without the relative commercial breakthrough of "Kaputt."

Simply put, this is an expensive album, drunk on strings, horns and percussion, all whisked lavishly together at Bryan Adams's Warehouse Studio in Vancouver (marking Bejar's first time in a "fancy, proper studio," he notes).

Bejar's initial ideas about doing a heavily percussive "disco-salsa" record faded in favour of the carefully arranged orchestral sweep of "Poison Season."

He found himself listening to more jazz, and being inspired by singers from the pre-rock era, people who "operated in this crooning world."

With his vocals assuming new prominence, Bejar found himself reconsidering his voice.

"I was really thinking about steering (the songs) into my strengths, even if it took me 20 years to find my strengths as a singer," said the 42-year-old.

"I didn't feel like it was a weakness — I just had people constantly telling me my voice was strange or unlistenable."

Did that bother him?

"Destroyer's always supposed to be an abrasive project, thus the name," he replied. "It's never supposed to be easy listening.

"It was definitely supposed to be some kind of battleground between the words and the music. I cram songs so full of words that they can only be sung in a kind of ranting or evangelical style. I drink two fistfuls of whisky and press go.

"I think what I'm doing now is much more measured and thinking about the music as a whole."

To many, Destroyer's sound would seem to vary wildly with each album, a testament to his compulsion toward restless reinvention.

Bejar, however, downplays his diversity.

"I see way more similarities in Destroyer songs from album to album than most people see," he said. "There's a writing style and certain chords that I lean on, which is pretty etched in stone.

"It's shockingly immobile."

Well, Bejar is nothing if not reliably defiant.

"Poison Season" is Destroyer's 10th album — but of course, do not expect him to betray any sentimentality.

"I do like the sound of it, (even though) it doesn't really mean anything to me at all," he said.

"It probably just means that Plan B doesn't feel like an option anymore. I guess I just churn out records. It's what I do now.

"I think at some point, all these prickly characters make peace with showbiz. I think that was probably something that I was going through between these two records.

"You just finally catch up to what it is you've done and, maybe, what it is you are."

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News from © The Canadian Press, 2015