Destroyer Trouble In Dreams WB rating out of 100

Great music can come in two very distinct, but equally fulfilling, forms. The first is that which grabs you by the balls on the very first listen, mercilessly taking your attention hostage and showing no sign of relinquishing. The other kind is more insidious. Like a parasite, it will take an initial listen as an opportunity to surreptitiously burrow deep into the rarely accessed recesses of the brain – most likely those that control involuntary spurts of random dancing – and wait, patiently, for the moment when, without warning or any noticeable trigger, it comes screaming back to the forefront. Trouble in Dreams is of this latter, parasitic, variety. But that doesn’t make it any less of a great album.

Dan Bejar, while insisting that the band is always a collaborative effort on the part of those involved, has been the sole continuous member of Destroyer across eight records and 12 years. Yet Trouble in Dreams is the first to provide real credibility to Bejar’s collaborative arguments, this album containing the same team that worked on 2006’s Destroyer’s Rubies. The consistency of members shows, with Bejar’s near-trademark abstruse and verbose lyrics weaving through simplistic-seeming acoustic-electric guitar interplay with a surefooted confidence that is often lacking in music that treads similarly idiosyncratic terrain.

And it is this simple-sounding device that Destroyer wields with devastating intent on track-after-track of Trouble in Dreams. Working in tandem with a crisply produced rhythm section, high-pitched, clear, ringing guitar lines pack a substantial emotional punch throughout the record and especially on album highlight ‘My Favourite Year’ – which feels almost abnormally epic for what is essentially a pop song with clear U2 overtones.

Similarly Bejar's penchant for lyrical complexity remains unabated across Trouble in Dreams' 11 tracks, cloaking the words in a musical mantle that manages to lend a modicum of space to accommodate them. Yet, this is not an obscure record. Seven tracks come in at under four minutes, at what is essentially a pop record – and an elegant, unique, somber and mesmerizing one at that. Of course, in true Bejar style there are the obligatory self-references and longer tracks with ‘Shooting Rockets’ coming in eight minutes long, lyrically abstruse and as self denotive as the world has come to expect.

Bejar's historical tendency to create songs that were more experimental than practical is also shelved in 2008, much as it was in 2006. At no point is there the nagging sensation that, in his efforts to contort music to his personal artistic goals, somewhere the song got lost – a feeling that hung vapour-like over some earlier recordings. Here, the song, nay, the hook, is paramount – for what other reason would we here the thoroughly non-lyrical “Na na na na na na na na na”, as we do during one of the innumerable hooks in 'Dark Leaves Form A Thread'.

Of course, Bejar's voice is not for everyone. Like The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, his somewhat nasal voice can detract from the noteworthy music. However, in Destroyer's case, it's somewhat less relevant. Bejar singing/speaking voice is a vessel to convey words, which themselves convey myriad meanings, all tied up in a beautiful, but knotty, bow.

From opening number, the gloriously stripped back 'Blue Flower/Blue Flame', to closer 'Libby's First Sunrise', Destroyer paint a picture in vivid, hyperactive 21st century colour, defying genre and convention, earning the label 'pop' only through the infectiously hook-laden nature of every second of Trouble in Dreams – even when things get decidedly confronting, like the insane blues-rock breakdown on 'The State', it its nothing but thrilling and unusually uplifting.

There is always a reluctance to give a rave review for anything so early in the year, only to find that it doesn’t even register on any end-of year charts…but it’s safe to say that if Trouble in Dreams isn’t somewhere in considerations, 2008 is going to be one hell of a year.