Reconsidering Trouble In Dreams

"The message from the critical reception of Dreams was quite clear: we will not be listening to you any further. Of course some tension is created. Cosmonaut in a bread line, et cetera."---'Grief Point' off the Archer On The Beach/Grief Point EP


"I was on the outs for awhile but now things are alright."---'Blue Flower, Blue Flame' off the Trouble In Dreams album

Dan Bejar went through a period of creative turmoil about the time between the release of Trouble In Dreams and before he released Kaputt, whereupon he came back to us, creatively and otherwise. Following the difficult recording of Trouble In Dreams, he seemed to doubt music altogether, as on the above quoted EP he declares "I have lost interest in music. It is horrible." It could be I am misreading or misinterpreting some lyrics and interview comments from this era, but I don't think so.


Anyway, you may recall that I reviewed this album a few years ago. I still think that review is well written but Trouble In Dreams has been one of those albums that has persisted and grown with me since said writing...and I've been meaning to make it a regular thing for my blog where I go back to things I've written about before...and I've been meaning to start posting on this blog again after a long absence.

So here we are.

I've indeed grown to love Trouble In Dreams since 2008, though this is largely because it's since been contextualized by Dan Bejar's subsequent work with Destroyer and his other projects. It's perfectly acceptable to me now that this record isn't so much a follow-up or progression from Destroyer's Rubies as it is Dan Bejar's version of a relaxed, underrated, not-quite-triumph Destroyer album, kind of like his version of Bob Dylan's New Morning. Like that record, there's some definite career highlights and hidden gems ('Plaza Trinidad', 'The State'), but there's also some failed songwriting experiments (the overlong, unsatisfying 'My Favorite Year') and lazy bunts to pad out the runtime ('Blue Flower, Blue Flame' and 'Libby's First Sunrise'). More importantly, though, Trouble In Dreams didn't turn out to be the troubling (pun unintended) begin of a slide into laziness and mediocrity which my old review vaguely predicts. So why my change in opinion? Well, it's just that sometimes laziness and mediocrity are the product of a relaxed artist at the height of his powers turning in work that doesn't sound as inventive, committed, and fresh as it used to.

Anyway.

Just as Dylan made many albums better than New Morning, Dan Bejar has done better work than Trouble In Dreams many times over. Yet there remains a ragged appeal to both records partially because they aren't as ubiquitous as other works by the artists. 'Like A Rolling Stone' is still a groundbreaking song, but it's more enjoyable to hear 'One More Weekend' in some ways because you don't have it memorized or forced upon you by classic rock radio. Likewise I suspect the apocalyptic epic 'Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night's Ape)' will be a novel, experimental thrill for Destroyer fans well versed in the 'European Oils'- and 'Kaputt'-style better known, accessible tracks he's done over the years. But I digress. Trouble In Dreams remains one of Destroyer's lesser works and I still wouldn't rewrite history to put it on my list of best albums of 2008, but there is something to be said for albums that stick with you and grow on you, and this one did.

On a side note, yes: Whiskey Pie is officially back from the wilderness.

Destroyer- Thief

Dan Bejar has always been gifted when it comes to lyrics, but an appropriate musical backing for his early Destroyer records seemed like an afterthought. The City Of Daughters album is held back by short grating instrumentals and the overall sense he's being obtuse and clever just to be obtuse and clever; his albums before that were rough and forgettable things, semi-obscure and best left that way. Streethawk: A Seduction, then, is considered his first true success, a rich record with purposeful and catchy songwriting, though I think this praise also belongs to Thief. Released the same year as the breakthrough debut of The New Pornographers, Destroyer's Thief can't help but sound like a reaction to that band. Perhaps it merely inspired Bejar to care more about melodies and hooks. Either way, sprinkling some classic rock and singer/songwriter influences on his music produced a record that contained songwriting and melodies as beguiling and original as the lyrical voice always had been.

What promise was hinted at on City Of Daughters and earlier is, here, finally achieved. Some have suggested that Thief is also a reaction to Bejar's lack of success, but it's be hard to tell if he's serious or not with his criticisms and witty abstractions on tracks like 'Destroyer's The Temple' and the Pink Floyd nodding 'To The Heart Of The Sun, On The Back Of The Vulture I'll Go.' I always get the feeling Bejar is more interested in how words sound together and the kind of feelings and imagery they can evoke, so any meaning in his songs is up to the listener. Yet there's enough commentary and witticisms about the music business, cryptic as they might be, that he must be attempting to say something, a goal few or none of his other releases share, making Thief a bit of a unique bird for that reason alone.

If there's a chief weakness to Thief, it's that whenever the band gets up to roaring energy on rockers like 'Canadian Lover/Falcon's Escape' and the surf-pop sounding 'City Of Daughters', they always merely smolder when they should burn. I'm not sure if this is the same band used on the Destroyer's Rubies and Trouble In Dreams albums, but by that point the Destroyer band was capable of burning with the best. Thief, on the other hand, feels detached and half-committed: are these songs of sincerity and energy, or irony and apathy?

It could be that this question doesn't matter when applied to Destroyer, yet there's a nagging notion in the back of my head that knows, as much as I like Thief, it's a dress rehearsal for Streethawk: A Seduction, an album superior in every way because it's more relaxed and fun. Bejar has something to prove on it, whereas on Thief he merely has something to say. This could explain the album's weak second half, the anti-climactic title track, and overall lack of focus (those pointless instrumentals and experimental tracks from City Of Daughters still rear their heads), yet I'll still stick up for Thief as the first wholly enjoyable Destroyer album, one that has something to say and says it well more often than not.

Destroyer- Kaputt

You've got to hand it to Dan Bejar. You think he's going to zig, but you know he doesn't do things that way, so then you think he's going to zag, and then it turns out he actually is going to zig, after all. What the hell am I talking about, you ask? As if to prove yet again how unpredictable and obtuse he is, it turned out that the musical direction Bejar (aka Destroyer) took on his 2009 EP, Bay Of Pigs, would also be the one he stuck with for his next album and not something else entirely. Moreover, in between these releases was the primarily ambient collaboration with Loscil and Tim Hecker on last year's Archer On The Beach EP, which further confused matters by NOT being much like either Pigs or the eventual album, Kaputt...though one of the tracks, 'Grief Point', originally had the working title 'Bay Of Pigs.' Whew! All of this is ultimately irrelevant, however, because Kaputt is so damn good, and so damn stylized, that it harkens back to the synth-pop/MIDI-orchestra of Your Blues more than anything else. And it isn't really much like that album at all, other than superficially.

As someone who generally can't stand how 80s music sounds, I hope it's significant that I think Kaputt is going to be on many album of the year lists, including mine. Unlike the nostalgic chill wave/hypnogogic music of bands like Neon Indian, Ariel Pink, and Toro Y Moi, Kaputt fully embraces the sound and aesthetic of early-to-mid 80s music instead of merely embracing the warm glow of your memories of the 80s filtered through drugs and modern electronics. What this means is Kaputt is always swathed in a dreamy fog machine atmosphere, always caught up in a dancefloor reverie straight out of a New Wave dance club, with back up singers, trumpet and saxophone solos, a mid-tempo groove, and impressionistic neon keyboards and synthesizers all over the place. Bejar's lyrics remain as memorable and quotable as ever, though they too evoke the 80s, with the title track painting a picture of “wasting your days, chasing some girls/alright, chasing cocaine/through the back rooms of the world all night.”

Kaputt is as unpredictable a follow-up to the unfocused and singer-songwritery Trouble In Dreams as Your Blues was to its predecessor, the jammy and indulgent This Night. It also ends up being an atmospheric, mood setting album, the sort of record where most of the songs kind of sound the same, and you could easily switch the lyrics between them and it wouldn't matter...yet somehow, this isn't a bad thing. In fact, the “I wrote a song for America” lyrical call out on the title track, and its forming of the basis for the 'Song For America' track, is well within Bejar's usual meta-music wheelhouse. You get the sense that he doesn't consider his songs or lyrics as discrete entities, and that his music is—and always was—about the big picture, the overall feel. Given that the shortened version of 'Bay Of Pigs' on Kaputt is referred to with the subtitle 'Detail', I would even suggest that Bejar is more interested in comparing his work to paintings or literature than anything else. Anyone who has ever flipped through those big coffee table book collections of paintings by, say, Salvador Dali, will know that often the close-ups taken from paintings are referred to as 'Detail of...' Moreover, I could see Bejar referring to a demo as, say, 'Study For Bay Of Pigs' just as artists call sketches for eventual paintings or artwork 'studies.' Similarly, in a press release list of 22 things a listener might want to know to understand the album, Bejar makes as many references to non-musical influences and ideas as he does to musical ones. This includes, tellingly, “[t]he superiority of poetry and plays...”

If Destroyer's last two albums can be described as red wine albums, full of loose 70s classic rock and inspired poetic singer-songwriter-isms, then Kaputt is definitely a white wine (if not specifically a champagne) album. The lengthy instrumental intro to 'Suicide Demo For Kara Walker', complete with flute(!), as well as the other places where the record is content to yield the floor to saxophone and trumpet intros, interludes, and outros, recalls immaculate mid 70s to mid 80s sophisticated pop by, I dunno...Steely Dan. This record is the kind you can put on while cooking dinner, puttering around your apartment, or enjoying a romantic evening with a significant other. I don't mean that as a slight; Kaputt isn't ambient music or only enjoyable while half-heard, though those aforementioned instrumental parts and the easy-listening (also not intended as a slight!) make it just as perfect for close listening as they do for background noise.

Kaputt doesn't sound like the rest of his discography, and it may be a dead end in the same way the style of Your Blues was immediately abandoned after its release. Yet Kaputt is as visionary and satisfying a dead end as that synth-heavy record was, perhaps even more so because of its consistency in both songwriting and the finessed, spot-on playing from all contributors. This album is so good that I certainly hope he's still not serious about retiring from music, as he's been vaguely hinting at for the past couple years, because Kaputt is as fresh and vital a release as we're likely to get from anyone this year. Highly recommended.

(Note: assuming it's not a limited edition print run, like so many of his releases, I would emphatically recommend picking up the vinyl version of Kaputt. It comes with 20ish minutes of bonus material on side C, though strangely it's almost entirely the music of one of the band members, and mostly instrumental, to boot. Coming between 'Song For America' and 'Bay Of Pigs (Detail)' as it does, 'The Laziest River'--which is broken up into discrete sections on the record but not on the digital download included with the vinyl version, because Bejar loves to confuse people—goes even further into instrumental 80s soft-rock reveries than the rest of the album, providing a nice chance to leave the album to, say, run to the store for more wine or move from the couch to the bedroom, depending on if you're alone or not).

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Archer On The Beach EP

After hearing Archer On The Beach, I feel confident in saying that no one quite makes music like Dan Bejar. He comfortably fits into two stylistically different side projects/supergroups: the power-pop of the New Pornographers and the experimental indie rock of Swan Lake. Yet when it comes to his band, Destroyer, it's increasingly difficult to pin down where he's going. His last two albums, Destroyer's Rubies and Trouble In Dreams, perfected and began to ossify his mid-60s-Bob-Dylan-meets-70s-David-Bowie style. Then, for last year's Bay Of Pigs EP, he seemed to toss everything out the window and begin anew. The title track was a 13 minute synth-pop/groove-rock marathon, with plenty of ambience and detachment that carried over more overtly in the other song, 'Ravers', a remake of the song 'Rivers' from Trouble In Dreams.

With Archer On The Beach, Bejar has taken his music to an even more fractured and atmospheric direction. Whether this will be the predominant style on the forthcoming Kaputt album is unknown, but it has certainly raised my expectations and curiosity about it. The two songs on this EP were collaborations with ambient/electronic artists Tim Hecker and Loscil, the latter of whom is the drummer in Destroyer, and who had previously contributed some kind of remix or remake to the Destroyer's Rubies vinyl release. Anyway, Archer On The Beach is interesting because it's arguably not a Destroyer release to begin with. Bejar contributes only lyrics/vocals while the music is entirely from the other two musicians. It seems odd, then, that this was released under the Destroyer name, since other than Bejar, none of the Destroyer band members appear. Well, Loscil does, but he appears under his ambient/electronic name and not his real name as he does when drumming for Destroyer. Confused yet?

The title track of this EP plays like a morose ballad, with lightning storm sound effects, crowd noise, and echoing keyboards creating a foreboding atmosphere that never quite goes anywhere but never feels repetitive. 'Grief Point', meanwhile, is either a remake or reworking of the Loscil song 'The Making Of Grief Point', on which Bejar had appeared. I'm pretty sure it's the same vocal take, and to confuse matters further, the Merge Records website description of this EP says that 'Grief Point' was the original working title of a song called 'Bay Of Pigs.' Whether that was the same 'Bay Of Pigs' from the last EP...well, who knows? Destroyer has so often remade or retitled his songs, and his discography is chock full of meta-references, that it feels futile to figure it out.

What I do know is that Bejar must be going through some kind of artistic crisis not unlike what Sufjan Stevens seems to have gone through over the past four years. Again, according to the Merge site, 'Grief Point' was the first song Bejar made after deciding to never record again. Is this statement hyperbole? Seeing as how the title of the forthcoming album is Kaputt and the cover features the Destroyer band near a cliff (possibly the titular Grief Point?), seemingly considering whether they should jump or not, it strikes me as appropriate that this song seems to be about how he doesn't care about making music any more, and by extension, how pointless making any art is. It's also his first spoken word performance as Destroyer: “I have lost interest in music...it is horrible,” he intones, before the sound of a drink being poured jokingly(?) follows. All the while, the music is nothing more than some unobtrusive synth sounds that are just barely more accompaniment than pure silence, as well as some musique concrete stuff, such as dogs barking and the sound of Bejar shifting in his seat.

It's hard to say how true this spoken word piece is, since Bejar has made a career of writing about all sorts of characters and situations that he has no personal stake in. Is he just messing with us, or is he serious about quitting music? Either way, this EP is a fascinating listen, albeit not a wholly satisfying one. I feel like all of Bejar's releases are key pieces of his mystique, but where Bay Of Pigs was engaging and enjoyable, Archer On The Beach is too given over to ambience and atmosphere, and a questioning of his creative impulse, to feel substantial or rewarding. Had this EP been released under a different name, or with top billing given to the two other artists involved, I may have been more lenient. As it is, though, Archer will only interest the Destroyer faithful, and will only satisfy about half of those.

3 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Your Blues

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's one of her masterpieces, but PJ Harvey's last album, White Chalk, was a fascinating detour. Whereas before she was always the alt-rock guitar playing goddess, on that album she primarily plays piano, crafting songs that sound like what I imagine Tori Amos at her best must be like. There's a quote on the Wikipedia page for the album attributed to an interview in the magazine The Wire where she says “the great thing about learning a new instrument from scratch is that it [...] liberates your imagination.” I couldn't help but think of Destroyer's Your Blues when I read this quote, because Dan Bejar's sudden use of MIDI instruments and synthesizers on the album now strikes me as a similar situation.

Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn't heard any of Destroyer's pre-Your Blues albums, so the divide between it and the rest of his discography wasn't as sharp as it would've been. However, now that I know the rest of his albums fall into the 70s-David-Bowie-meets-mid-60s-Bob-Dylan sound, Your Blues is all the curvier of a curveball to throw. Still, last year's Bay Of Pigs EP and the recent Archer On The Beach, which promises to be even more ambient/electronic than the former (though I haven't heard it yet, so we'll see), show that the name Destroyer isn't synonymous with a certain kind of music. But I digress.

Returning to the PJ Harvey quote above: I feel like by forcing himself to give up his backing band and focus primarily on MIDI instrumentation and synthesizers, Bejar become a much more imaginative and skilled songwriter. Oh, sure, contributing songs to the New Pornographers helped, and his lyrics have always been amongst the most dense, intriguing, and self-referential in all of music—I never get tired of reminding people that he has a Wiki devoted to his lyrics—but I think it was only on Your Blues and after that his gift for music bloomed. Of course I have to immediately say that I love all of his earlier stuff that I've heard, but to me they don't match his post-Blues material in terms of arrangements and hooks.

This record's synth-orchestral pop aesthetic is what makes Your Blues the secret masterpiece of Destroyer's career. Since I normally don't go for music that has a cheesy synth-pop or lame MIDI-based sound to it, I was relieved to find Your Blues never sounds cheap or retro. 'An Actor's Revenge' has all the pomp and drama of the best baroque pop music of the past, albeit played on synthesizers instead of actual orchestral instruments. What should sound like schmaltzy plucked strings and over-done tympani hits on 'From Oakland To Warsaw' actually come off as sympathetic and appropriate accompaniment. Yet as brilliant as Your Blues is, I do prefer some of the Frog Eyes-backed reworkings of these songs on the Notorious Lightning & Other Works EP. In particular, on this album 'Don't Become The Thing You Hated' simply has too many unnecessary layers of sound during its middle section. 'Notorious Lightning' is the other prime candidate for best makeover, since it doesn't sound right to me when it's not a nine minute raucous guitar epic. OK, OK, this is supposed to be a review of Your Blues and not a comparison contest with an EP. Moving on...

Your Blues is that rare record that takes huge chances and delivers every step of the way. It is most assuredly the sort of music that will immediately turn off even longtime fans who can't get past the MIDI/synth instruments. I can understand that. Yet when I called it his secret masterpiece, I meant it, because those listeners who get what it is Bejar was going for on this album will truly love it. It may not become your go-to Destroyer album to throw on in an indecisive moment, but it may become your new favorite album for a week or two. And that, in my experience, is something worth investigating.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Destroyer- Bay Of Pigs EP

Longtime Destroyer fans should by now be used to Dan Bejar's wandering muse. His stylistic changes aren't as extreme as, say, Beck's, and aren't as (in)famous as David Bowie, an artist whom Bejar is often compared to. Bejar's best known one-two curveball was 2004's Your Blues album, a synth/keyboard orchestral-pop masterpiece, along with the subsequent tour and EP (the underrated Notorious Lightning & Other Works) with the unhinged Frog Eyes as a backing band. Destroyer's next two albums were relatively straightforward indie rock/singer songwriter stuff, so I'd have to assume Bay Of Pigs came as a shock to newer fans.

At any rate, Bay Of Pigs returns Bejar, at least conceptually, to the synth/keyboard heavy Your Blues. But where that album had a purposefully cheap MIDI sound to it, this one sounds clean, slick, modern, and like the work of a full band instead of a single lab rat. Various reviews have described the title track as disco-ish, but to these ears it's more like 80s synth-pop with a good sense of groove than it is some Saturday Night Fever dreck. At thirteen-and-a-half minutes, it also has time for eerie atmospheric intro and outro sections, and lets Bejar go on and on in his 'Tangled Up In Blue'/Dylan-esque storyteller mode, weaving yet more references to characters, places, and events from his body of work, as well as adding some new ones. 'Ravers', meanwhile, is a ghostly remake of the barrelhouse piano based rock of 'Rivers' from Destroyer's 2008 album, Trouble In Dreams. I do prefer the original version, since the words and phrasing style of it feel forced and awkward in this droning, ambient setting. But at the same time, I've never heard a song like this from Bejar before, and his distinctive vocals and lyrics work shockingly well in said setting. It's novel, sure, but not a novelty.

The same could be said for the EP. Whether Bejar pursues this direction for his next album with Destroyer is impossible to say. I hope he does, for whatever that's worth. Well, whatever does happen, it won't change the fact that Bay Of Pigs is a brilliant, challenging-but-rewarding EP.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

My Favorite Albums Of The 00s (Part 2) & (Part 3)

Sorry for the lateness. As you'll see in the third video, I've been having all sorts of issues with my computer and Internet lately. Anyway, they're finally done. Should have a written review up tomorrow. And yes, from now on the videos won't be lists.

Album Of The Week: Destroyer- Destroyer's Rubies

Something about the cover of Destroyer's Rubies has always captured my imagination. There's something strongly Dylan-esque about it, with Dan Bejar (aka Destroyer) popping up in the lower left and a mysterious woman in the background, all set against the backdrop of a Bohemian-looking apartment stuffed with books and interesting furniture. Some nice sunlight is coming in through the window and the whole thing has a very naturalist look to it even though, like Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, it's unclear whether it was staged or not.

In any case, this Dylan-vibe continues to the music and lyrics. Rubies and its follow-up Trouble In Dreams are similar to Dylan's mid 60s folk/rock/singer/songwriter phase, meaning lots of pianos, organs, and electric guitars. Yet Where Dylan knitted surrealist/absurdist pastiches with his lyrics, Bejar, while similarly odd, has a style that weaves a self-referential tapestry of various characters, locations, and situations as well as literary, musical, and mythological references. It's no wonder there's a Wiki devoted to him. For instance, someone named 'Priest' is referred to in three different songs on Rubies, while there are many meta-nods to other Destroyer songs and albums ("your blues" shows up in two songs, which was the name of the album before Rubies).

This is all well and good, but you don't need to know any of this to enjoy the album. Moreover it doesn't so much copy Dylan as fit in the long line of singer/songwriters with keen ears for the way words can sound, how voices and lyrics can deliver meaning. Also, as evidenced by his work with the New Pornographers, Bejar has a gift for pop songwriting. Though he's a bit more subdued outside of that band, Rubie's is still bursting with incredible songwriting of the highest caliber. 'Rubies' opens the album, a nine minute epic that keeps twisting and turning, never sounding repetitive despite repeating itself a few times. 'Painter In Your Pocket' has an almost expressionistic backing of organs, (what sound like) bowed or e-bowed guitars, and tom-toms. The loose 'Sick Priest Learns To Last Forever' is rollicking fun that reminds me of both the Grateful Dead's bluesy early 70s jams like 'Easy Wind' and some of the more insouciant moments of Bob Dylan's infamous '66 "Royal Albert Hall" bootleg (which actually took place in Manchester, dontchaknow). Finally, 'A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point' is just one of those quintessential Destroyer songs, with an overly verbose title/main lyric, lots and lots of wordless/incomprehensible "la la la" and "da da da" singing, and endlessly quotable lines. My favorite being:

The sun sets at the speed of light
So I thought I also might leave this
Port of woe on tall ships made of snow invading the sun

Destroyer's Rubies can kind of sneak up on you. It's a very classicist singer/songwriter sort of album, and nothing about it initially struck me as groundbreaking or particularly gripping. But in the end, the songwriting wins you over, something evidence by the fact that Trouble In Dreams is very similar, sound and aesthetic-wise, but nowhere near as good. And now that I think about it, Rubies is one of the albums I've probably listened to more than any other from this decade. I so rarely think of it when compiling mental lists or recommendations for people to listen to, so let me get it down now: Destroyer's Rubies is front-to-back enjoyable and one of the best albums of this decade, a work I never tire of and return to over and over like a favorite book or film.

Swan Lake- Enemy Mine

I had a small twinge of delight when the collaborative side project/supergroup Swan Lake was first announced. I was still new to the work of the three musicians involved--Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes), Daniel Bejar (Destroyer), and Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown)--but the idea of them working together was, dare I say, exciting. I didn't know at the time that Spencer Krug was a sometime member of Frog Eyes, and that Frog Eyes had toured behind Destroyer and subsequently recorded an EP with him, Notorious Lightning And Other Works, so while there was some recorded evidence of the three as a creative force it was but a bite size chunk. Excitement and anticipation aside, Swan Lake's debut, Beast Moans, too often sounded like each member had brought songs from their main projects and let the other two add bits and pieces. It's an inconsistent, imperfect album but one well worth seeking out for fans of any of the three musicians. The take away from Beast Moans is that it never truly gelled into a project with a standalone identity. It never sounds like its own thing whereas other 'supergroups' do, if that makes sense.

Enemy Mine mostly succeeds at finally making Swan Lake into something other than "the other two playing in the style of whoever wrote the song." On almost every song, Mercer, Bejar, and Krug make better use of the gifts of the others, whether it be to bring their unique vocals along as a foil or duet of sorts or to coat the songs with their stylistic flourishes and trademarks. There may be no peaks as high as Beast Moan's 'Are You Swimming In Her Pools?' or 'A Venue Called Rubella' but Enemy Mine also sounds like a Swan Lake album and not an album of 'Sunset Rubdown with some Frog Eyes and Destroyer', 'Frog Eyes with some Sunset Rubdown and Destroyer', or 'Destroyer with some Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown.'

Enemy Mine falls just short of the masterpiece I think these three are capable of together, but it does improve on their debut in all the ways that matter. In fact, it's surprising and fresh for one reason: Mercer manages to turn in the best material. He was just sort of there doing his thing on Beast Moans and he didn't fit as well as Krug and Bejar did together. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but on Enemy Mine I sense that he stepped up his game. His songs strike me as the most committed; that is to say, they sound the most like what I imagined Swan Lake would sound like, as a new sound or set of ideas instead of the aforementioned 'two guys backing one in that one guy's style.' That Mercer opens and closes the album is a clear signal to the listener. It allows him to set the tone for and put the period on Enemy Mine. 'Spanish Gold, 2044', a swaggering, unhinged stroll, juxtaposes Mercer's free form ravings against Krug's worldless "oh oh ohs." Bejar's 'Ballad Of a Swan Lake, Or, Daniel's Song' takes his self referential myth-making to a new place, letting each Swan Lake member take a turn in a rowdy finish that kind of sounds like 'Row Row Row Your Boat' but way weirder and more inebriated. Meanwhile, Krug's best moment is inarguably 'A Hand At Dusk', which starts off sounding like a solo piece for piano but works in a synthesizer crescendo that, well, sounds like the sun going down, bridging the gap toward an ending that fits in both Mercer and Bejar but doesn't sound merely like Krug took a Sunset Rubdown piano ballad and had them sing something arbitrarily. Mercer may have arrived at the 'Swan Lake sound' a bit earlier and with better results, but with these two songs Krug and Bejar show they're catching on quick.

Still, it's Mercer's closing 'Warlock Psychologist' that successfully puts Enemy Mine into 'near excellent' status. Like his best work, it is both two minutes too long and yet could satisfactorily go on for another two. He and Krug end up trading off on the lyric 'Dotty's being taken away in the car' while Bejar does his patented 'I'm just going to sing syllables' thing before the song reaches a climactic ending with all three members singing something while a burbling keyboard draws the curtains closed.

Shuffling II

Right, then. It's another installment of Shuffling!!

1) The State by Destroyer: I'm beginning to wonder if I was too hard on Trouble In Dreams when I reviewed it. Subsequent visits to it have revealed an album that is perfectly fine and borderline great on its own terms. But it bears the unfortunate mark of following in the wake of Destroyer's Rubies, an album that I trust future generations will dig from their parents' iTunes libraries or whatever future people are using just as I dug Bringing It All Back Home from my parents's record collections. Anyway, this song is really damn good. I adore the moment around the 2:20 mark where the organ dies away and Dan Bejar comes back in full force. It's magical and one of those effortlessly brilliant songwriting moments that I listen to so much music for in order to experience it as often as possible.

2) Jenny by Sleater-Kinney: One of my friends (Hi, Pat) had a girlfriend named Jenny. I also had a crush on a girl in junior high and her name was Jenny. Somehow I had forgotten about that until just now. Well, anyway, Sleater-Kinney are awesome as usual. This song is almost plodding for them, with a wall of background guitar noise and those crunchy mid 90s indie rock sounding guitars that make me weep with joy. I used to worry about whether or not I like this band so much because they were women, but screw it. It doesn't matter what sex you are if you make music this good.

3) Bite Marks by Atlas Sound: Just as John Lennon's voice had a distinctive sound when ran through a reverb unit, whatever effects are always on Bradford Cox's voice make it unique and all his own. He has a very specific way of singing that's both flat/emotionless and, paradoxically, very emotive and either beautiful or painful. In another decade or so, I think critics and music fans will come to the conclusion that the stuff he's doing within Deerhunter and with his 'solo' project Atlas Sound is essential noise pop, and to this decade what My Bloody Valentine was to the late 80s and early 90s. This song has the same quality that My Bloody Valentine did, of being painfully noisy/loud while also being pretty and entrancing.

4) 61e.CR by Autechre: I remember once drunkenly telling a friend on AIM that Aphex Twin/Richard D. James would be known and appreciated throughout history like Beethoven and the Beatles are today. I think what I meant was how forward thinking and visionary his music is. That kind of thing can equally apply to Autechre, who release an album every so often that is 5 to 10 years ahead of what we're capable of appreciating. I think that their modern music works best for me when I think of it in terms of experimental beatmaking and texture creation instead of the old ambient techno/IDM thing of rhythms and melodies. Draft 7.30 only made sense to me when I thought of it as like a series of austere sonic sculptures instead of an album of songs. Songs like '61e.CR' are named like obscure computer files or viruses and sound like Autechre recorded an album of straightforward techno with block rocking beats and then remixed the whole thing to a ridiculous degree. Still, this song manages a relatively follow-able beat, like funk or hip hop made by/for the cold logic of computers.

5) Winter by The Dodos: What got The Dodos's foot in the door was releasing an album that was compared to Animal Collective circa Sung Tongs. But what kept them in my parlor as they sold me on their music were songs like this, which have a pounding primitive rhythm and incessant acoustic guitar but never sound repetitive or annoying. If Animal Collective can/have approximated organic techno music--making repetitive, highly rhythmic music with acoustic instruments and other sounds that aren't typically associated with the genre--then The Dodos picked up the thread of Sung Tongs, making music that is entirely acoustic but operates like techno would. Kind of. Well, this is still a great song and apropos given the weather in Ohio lately.

Destroyer- Notorious Lightning and Other Works EP

Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar) got away with one of the most fascinating conceits in modern music with his Your Blues album. On paper, I should hate it: an album recorded with synthesizers and keyboards instead of a band. However, the result was a stunning synth-orchestra with some of Destroyer's best songs and arrangements yet. Once you get past the instruments, it's a thrilling pop album. Then, when it came time to tour the album, Bejar pulled another trick out of his sleeve: his backing band wouldn't be a battery of keyboards, MIDI controllers, and sequencers, but Canada's off-kilter rock band Frog Eyes.

Clearly Bejar enjoyed this tour and collaboration, because not only did he issue this EP of studio versions of those live arrangements but also continued to work with Frog Eyes's leader Carey Mercer, most specifically in the Swan Lake project with sometime-Frog Eyes member/Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade member Spencer Krug.

The inevitable question becomes: are these re-imaginings superior to the original?? This is a problematic question for a few reasons. One, it implies that one has to be superior to the other. You can like both the subtle MIDI orchestra of the Your Blues album and the reptilian brain-stem distortions of Notorious Lightning. Two, the question can be taken on a case-by-case basis. I prefer the surging, guitar powered 'An Actor's Revenge' to the original, but 'The Music Lovers' fares better as a delicate sip of synthesizer wine than it does a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser. Third, and lastly, the question brings up another question: is this how Bejar wanted the songs to sound originally, but decided to re-do them in a synthesizer orchestra?? Basically, the possibility exists that he always wanted the songs to be careening-off-the-rails and Your Blues was the re-imagining rather than vice versa.

Anyway, even if you don't like any of these Frog Eyes-enhanced versions, this is ideally what I want from an EP. So many bands squander the potential of this musical format, either by releasing glorified singles or weighing them down with unnecessary remixes. Rather, I like EPs made up of all new material. Maybe the band recorded some good stuff, but it didn't function in the context of an album proper. Or maybe, as in this case, the songs twisted into strange new shapes during the tour and merited an official studio document.

At any rate, I find Notorious Lightning and Other Works a fascinating listen even if, ultimately, the Your Blues album is the true masterpiece of the two. Again, that's not to say I can't like both. There's room in my life for both the full band stomp of the Notorious 'Your Blues' (with surprisingly ornate keyboards that hint back to the original version) and the reverb drenched, synthesizer-flugelhorn led Your Blues version. It's strange for me to end a review this way, but if you don't like this EP, you should try the album. And if you simply can't get past the MIDI-ified album, then try the EP.

The New Pornographers- Challengers

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not critical enough of music. Lately I find myself writing more positive reviews than negative ones and I begin to wonder if I'm losing my edge; am I going soft, being too nice and accommodating to albums that, during the heat of youth, I would have dismantled with precision?? Perhaps it's just that I'm more selective about what I bother to review--why say anything if all you have is nothing nice?? Bad reviews are fun to write, but I actually find they're more difficult to write because it's harder to articulately posit criticisms than it is to repeat "boy, this sucks" in increasing volume and tenacity.

I bring this up because Challengers is one of very few recent albums I've flat out not enjoyed and I've had trouble getting my head around precisely why I don't think it's good. I wish it were as simple as "it's not as good as their other albums" because then we could just drop that on the table and nod, offering up witticisms about taste being subjective before we put on Led Zeppelin IV and open some beers. But while it is indeed not as good as their other albums, there's more going on in Challengers than just an example of an inferior sequel.

I think everyone can agree that the first three New Pornographers albums are of-a-piece. They don't sound identical, but they're all working from the same indie pop/power pop blueprint. They contain some of the catchiest and most addictive songs from this decade, and I can't say enough good things about them. At the same time that the New Pornographers "supergroup" was cranking them out, the members of the band--including A.C. Newman (aka Carl Newman), Neko Case, and Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar)--were producing really great 'solo' albums. At some point after the release of the third New Pornographers album, Twin Cinema, the solo work began to infect the "supergroup", and it was not for the best.

I don't want to say that the only thing the New Pornographers are good at is their aesthetic as described above, but, well, Challengers doesn't prove that they're good at anything else. It sounds like A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder, Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, and Destroyer's Rubies smashed together in a car crash with Twin Cinema. The mix isn't so much a White Album-esque "each Beatle with the other three backing him" vibe as it is a watered down, confused mess. Even the songs which do play to their strengths--like 'All Of The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth' and 'Mutiny, I Promise You'--strike me as b-side quality. Elsewhere, I can't help but wonder what 'Go Places', 'My Rights Versus Yours', and 'Entering White Cecilia' might have sounded like if delivered on the respective 'solo' wings of Neko Case, A.C. Newman, and Destroyer.

What Challengers lacks most of all is hooks. "Hooks" are a very vague idea that everyone understands but nobody can explain, and this album is a great example of what not having hooks can do to your album. The first three New Pornographers albums had hooks spilling out of the speakers. The solo albums mentioned above have plenty of hooks without having to always be the "go for the throat!!" power pop of the New Pornographers. Yet even after listening to Challengers for the fifth time, I still don't remember much of anything about it. Normally the Dan Bejar songs are the highlights of a New Pornographers album: 'Jackie, Dressed In Cobras' is one of my favorite songs, ever, from any band or album. However, his contributions to Challengers are his weakest yet, a weakness that would begin to seem symptomatic with his kind-of-meh, hit-or-miss new album Trouble In Dreams. Meanwhile Carl Newman steadfastly tries to remake his solo album in this setting and comes up wanting again and again. Part of the blame for the hook-less can be placed at the feet of the increasingly dominant acoustic/orchestral sound the band began to head in during Twin Cinema. I think it needs to be said: acoustic instruments don't belong in the New Pornographers. At least not as the main instruments.

I hesitate to be too negative toward Challengers because I have ample evidence in and out of the discography of the New Pornographers that they're capable of incredible things. I keep telling myself that maybe it's me and not the album; maybe I don't "get it" yet and on this listen I will. But this is not a difficult album: there is nothing to get. It is what it is, and what Challengers happens to be is a creative misstep, not a disaster but a true disappointment if there ever was one.

Swan Lake- Beast Moans

People like to throw around the term "supergroup" as if it actually means anything anymore. Every time a few guys from other bands start a band together you hear that they're a "supergroup." I don't know about you, but the idea of "supergroups" becomes totally unappealing once you've listened to great musicians or artists thrown together at benefit concerts or music festivals. The cold realization is that it takes time for people to get used to each other, and it is exceedingly rare that people who've never collaborated together could produce something substantial on the first try. It's fun to make up dream bands--Hendrix on guitar, John Bonham on drums, that kind of thing--but the truth is they play entirely different styles and would take awhile to either learn to play in each other's framework or create something wholly new.

So, then, Swan Lake, which combines Dan Bejar (solo artist under the moniker Destroyer and the secret weapon of the New Pornographers), Carey Mercer (brilliant howler of Frog Eyes), and Spencer Krug (sometime member of Frog Eyes, main force behind Sunset Rubdown, and a significant creative half of Wolf Parade). At first glance this line up wouldn't make sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Destroyer's work. After releasing the synth/keyboard based Your Blues album, Dan Bejar decided to tour with Frog Eyes as his backing band, transforming the orchestrated and synthetic affectations of the album into a rocking and rollicking barnstormer. If you've ever seen Bob Dylan live in the past few years and witnessed how his band transforms the songs into new and fantastic shapes, then you have an idea of what the Frog Eyes pairing was like. Anyway, Bejar, Mercer, and Krug enjoyed the tour so much they recorded an EP under the Destroyer name, Notorious Lightning and Other Works, and made plans to record an album together. Thus, a year or so later, the Swan Lake project was born.

Where exactly does Beast Moans fall on the scale between "disparate musicians taking turns playing in each other's style" and "creating something unlike anything the three have produced before"?? Well, more of the former than the latter. Imagine me saying that with a tinge of disappointment and you've got the general crux of the issue. Beast Moans is a bit of a slippery album because I feel like Dan Bejar and Spencer Krug make better collaborators than either of them with Carey Mercer. This is no knock on Mercer or Frog Eyes, but that band's style is so distinctive and unhinged that one gets the feeling that here Bejar and Krug help make Mercer's songs more coherent and traditional while he, in turn, makes their's more unpredictable and odd. Consider 'The Partisan But He's Got To Know', which is just a typically great Frog Eyes song until Bejar and Mercer trade lines toward the end, adding much needed flavor syrup to the reverby Slushie that is Frog Eyes. Metaphorically speaking. On the other hand, consider album closer 'Shooting Rockets' which, though written by Bejar, is an apocalyptic dirge buried beneath dense guitar soundscapes and clattering percussion. Compare this to the version of the song that appears on Bejar's recent Destroyer album Trouble In Dreams in a cleaned up and much more enjoyable form.

Some new ideas do appear on Beast Moans, and promise greater things on the inevitable, all-but-released next album. After Bejar's magnificent 'The Freedom', the song segues into 'Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914', which has a title like a Frog Eyes song but belongs to each member equally. Over a repetitive drum beat, glistening guitars, and downright beautiful keyboards, Krug and Bejar harmonize very well before trading off vocals to Mercer, who is commended for singing in a fashion somewhat unlike his usual style, much calmer and almost speak-singing.'Pleasure Vessels', though Mercer penned, switches between reverb drenched walls of sound and clean guitar chording, a mood piece as much as a song.

It's always hard for me to review a "supergroup" album and not declare a MVP, so to speak. Were I forced, the easy victor on this album is Spencer Krug. Though we all loved the Wolf Parade album and Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming, he really proves himself one of the best and most consistent songwriters of the Canadian indie scene with 'All Fires' and 'Are You Swimming In Her Pools?' which combine his love of repeating everyday phrases with poetic/romantic imagery. The latter presents such gems as "please is not a word I ever said quietly" and "I hope you find your mother there" alongside the flat-out amazing second 'verse' which begins with the following three lines:

Are you running up her riverbeds and navigating long fingers of a hand?
Because fingers make the hand
And rivers make the land

I want to give some credit to Mercer and Bejar, but their best works lies elsewhere as far as I'm concerned, and I feel like their best contributions to the album are still overshadowed by Krug. It's true that they probably pushed Krug to this level and/or helped him realize his songs better than he could have with his other bands, but one gets the distinct impression they didn't bring their "A" game to the proceedings. Props to Bejar, though, for managing anything as good as 'A Venue Called Rubella' while he's also busy dividing his output between Destroyer and New Pornographers.

Though I do genuinely enjoy this album, I also feel that the next thing they release will be even better. Other than Bejar, who played it safe on his last two releases to diminishing results (I'm still baffled that people like Challengers by the New Pornographers so much), Mercer and Krug seemed to take the lessons of this collaboration to heart. Both of the last albums by Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown were phenomenal, and represented great artistic steps--if not a leap--for each. Whatever the future holds for the Swan Lake project, rest assured that its first product, Beast Moans, is well worth seeking out for fans of any of the three minds behind it.

Destroyer- Trouble In Dreams

Most people like to divide Destroyer's work into the delicious and immediate songs for the New Pornographers and the intricate and studious for his own project. I've always had a problem with this inclination--for starters it forgets his Swan Lake project--because it means he consciously handpicks certain songs for each and I've never got the feeling he is that self aware. This, despite what almost every other critic constantly says about him: that he's becoming a self parody, all an act, wordy and poetic but doesn't mean anything he says, etc.

Me, I've always got the impression that he tries to make the best record he can each time out, and if the results vary, well, that's as much a matter of inspiration not striking as it is the methods and players he chose at the time. Interesting, then, that the players and methods for Trouble In Dreams have been carried over wholesale from his last album, 2006's much loved Destroyer's Rubies. The phrase "diminishing returns" may come to mind, and it's spot on. Trouble In Dreams is not a bad album, but it can't help but feel like an inferior version of Destroyer's Rubies.

I will give the album credit for at least restoring my faith in Dan Bejar as a songwriter. After the release of Destroyer's Rubies he went on to work on the Swan Lake collaboration with Carey Mercer and Spencer Krug. The resulting album, Beast Moans, almost wholly belongs to those two, with Bejar's contributions either subtle or lackluster. Then there's the last New Pornographers album, Mass Romantic, which is their weakest to date. Not coincidentally, it contains Bejar's weakest songs for the band where normally his songs were among the best. So I found myself looking forward to his next Destroyer release with some trepidation, and hallelujah, it's actually good. Career highlights abound on the album, like the drunken and thrashing 'The State', long psych-rock epic 'Shooting Rockets (From The Desk of Night's Ape)' (a remake of a song from the Swan Lake album), nuanced and delicate 'Introducing Angels', and coy Dylan-esque piano driven 'Rivers.' If every song is not a homerun, there are at least enough moments where the bases are loaded to warrant a listen.

Yet I don't want to praise Trouble In Dreams too much. It virtually defines the phrase "more of the same, but not as good." 'Dark Leaves From A Thread' sounds like a warmed over Destroyer's Rubies outtake, all frantic changes and melodious-but-flaccid lead guitar. Then there's the needlessly long 'My Favorite Year', with its momentum killing and impossible to understand "you reside in" refrain and pointless, wordless vocals. And while this may definitely sound like splitting hairs and wanting this album to be something it's not, Trouble In Dreams begins and ends weakly: 'Blue Flower/Blue Flame' is too mellow for an opener, while 'Libby's First Sunrise' runs off inconsequentially and gives one no sense of satisfaction. Compare this to Destroyer's Rubies which opens with the epic and dramatic 'Rubies' and ends with the energetic and playful guitar rock of 'Sick Priest Learns To Last Forever.'

All in all, one hopes that Destroyer does the impossible and produces something both new and better with his next release. My feelings for Trouble In Dreams are mixed and muddled. Taken on its own, it's a very good album. However, nothing exists in a vacuum, so it's also an inferior version of Destroyer's Rubies, though still not bad by any means. Fans are advised to pick this up immediately, but everyone else should seek out his other, more different work first.