“I’ve been workin’ on the new Oliver Twist!” is Dan Bejar’s mantra on “Sky’s Grey,” the opening track and lead single from Destroyer’s upcoming album ken. The follow-up to 2015’s Poison Season arrives this October and is produced by Black Mountain’s Josh Wells, who has been the drummer in Destroyer since 2012. A press release specifies that although ken is not a full-band effort, everyone in the band appears on it. Here’s Bejar on the “enigmatic” album title, which is not so enigmatic since he’s explaining it up front:

Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for “The Wild Ones” (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was “Ken.” 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. It’s 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 “The Wild Ones” speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think “ken” also means “to know.”

Hear “Sky’s Grey” below, where you can also find the tracklist and release info.

Tracklist:

01 “Sky’s Grey”
02 “In The Morning”
03 “Tinseltown Swimming In Blood”
04 “Cover From The Sun”
05 “Saw You At The Hospital”
06 “A Light Travels Down The Catwalk”
07 “Rome”
08 “Sometimes In The World”
09 “Ivory Coast”
10 “Stay Lost”
11 “La Regle du Jeu”

ken is out 10/20 on Merge. Pre-order it here.