I wish I had time for this to be a proper and thorough-going appreciation for Dan Bejar (New Pornographers, Swan Lake, Hello Blue Roses) and his solo outfit, Destroyer, which E. Tan and I saw at Bowery Ballroom a couple weeks ago.

Alas, this being the end of the semester I’m afraid you’ll get little more out of me than a quick once-over of the new album, a few words about the show (during which the band appeared to demolish a bottle of Jameson between them during the latter half of a stunning set), and some links that might keep you busy for a while if you’re so inclined.

Which somehow seems appropriate, given that I generally spend a couple hours reading Canadian music blogs around the time of a new Destroyer release, while I’m working to get a handle on it.

I’ve said once before on this site that if I were 22 all over again, Dan Bejar would probably be to me what Stephen Malkmus was then — someone whose every frustrating line rang like prophecy or poetry or both and sent me to imagine little essays explicating songs, even though I’d be tempted to believe the songs were essentially absurdist. And, frankly, I’m tempted to write little Destroyer essays anyway, lo these many years beyond 22. One thing you’ve got to hand to Bejar is that he can propel grown men into arguments about his music.

To wit: the recent exchange between Toronto critic/bloggers Carl Wilson and Michael Barclay, on the question of whether it’s a good or bad thing that Bejar insists his lyrics have no real meaning outside the emotions generated by their sounds and patterns. Is there message or meaning? “There’s no code. There’s no hidden veil,” Bejar told one North Carolinian interviewer. “There’s nothing behind the curtain of these words. It’s just like notes, you know? I feel like the languages have to be cut some slack, just like the melody or a really awesome drum fill or a swell of strings, it kind of means the same things as those words mean.”

That the words on Trouble in Dreams, Bejar’s eighth album as Destroyer, serve as an extension (or a prelude) to such fills and swells is a decent enough insight itself. When you watch a group of a couple hundred folks ranging from 20 to 45 gazing appreciatively at this fellow who looks like a Muppet rendition of Drunken Dylan, trying simultaneously to connect with and keep himself at arm’s length from the crowd, you realize that some sort of emotion’s being communicated. Some swoon. Others mouth along the lyrics (no mean feat). A couple guys want to rock out when the chance arises.

Most seem to be looking for a prophet, and the lines that seem most full of personal instruction or revelation (“Beware of the company you reside in!” from “My Favorite Year,” for example, or “Common scars brought us together,” from “Introducing Angels,” to cite two examples from the new record) become, via repetition, singalong chants. “My dear, didn’t you hear, a chorus is a thing that bears repeating?” he asks in the middle of “Shooting Rockets (From the Desk of Night’s Ape).” The lines he chooses to repeat are vague enough that listeners will remember them, can assign them personal meaning, but it really is the sound of them that means something — the “wind” or “air” of them — the way they’re wrapped up with the melody, the way they drop out altogether from time to time (or are replaced by Bejar filling a measure by counting time: “and three and four and…”), letting the music push you forward on its own, almost as if to underline the point that the words are going to fail.

One of the clear standouts from the show was the gentle little song “Foam Hands,” a radio edit if Bejar’s ever produced one. There’s little doubt this will become part of the Destroyer canon, and along with a couple other songs (“My Favorite Year,” “Libby’s First Sunrise”) is as good as anything Bejar’s ever written. God only knows what the lyrics mean:

True love regrets to inform you there are certain things you must do to perceive his face in the stains on the wall… I didn’t know what time it was at all. I didn’t know what time it was at all… Foam Hands…

Since you been gone, since you been gone, me and the King have been steadily growing apart… He lives down the hall… I didn’t know what time it was at all, I didn’t know what time it was at all… Foam Hands… I’m not the kind to tell you what is true and what is totally out of control… I didn’t know what time it was at all… Foam Hands…

Maybe there’s something specific and profound to be gleaned here: Bejar casually mentions in the interview I already cited that the opening line refers to the face of Jesus appearing in foam-washed cliffs somewhere in Spain, and that this is a stab at spirituality of some sort, but people will make of the image of “Foam Hands” what they will. My take on the phrase is that it invokes distance, the difficulty of touch; the repeated line about not knowing what time it is suggests some degree of disorientation. Easy enough to identify with on both counts. But the more important point, I think, is that kids up against the stage were actually wearing foam hands, which they waved overhead during the song.

Whether or not he wants the mantle, Bejar will be seen by some as a prophet, and so he seems doomed to the curse of Dylan: simultaneously courting and disillusioning those fans. Those who want meaning will find meaning: it may be literal, it may be an emotional impression, it may be an appreciation of the idea that the words don’t mean anything more than the wind and the sound waves they’re transmitted by. And maybe that’s good enough.

Sonically, Trouble resides in the same neighborhood as This Night and Your Blues (which happen to be two of my favorite Destroyer albums and which were the ones from which most of the set we saw was drawn). If anything sounds new here it’s the way this incarnation of his band — which has been traveling with him for a while — has gathered precision, cohesion, as they’ve worked together over the last several years. Live they’re as good as anything I’ve seen in a long, long time. The album plays with sounds from the late 80s and early 90s — I’d mark its boundaries as 87-93 — an era when people my age (and I’m only a couple years older than Bejar) moved from listening to The Cure and The Smiths (whose sounds lurk in the background in places) to Pavement. That transition felt like a Revolution, from British Post-Punk/New Wave to American Indie Rock, though we should have heard a little of The Cure in Pavement’s guitar lines. Trouble teases such resonances and genealogies to the surface. 1993 may have been Bejar’s favorite year — if we’re to believe the lyric from “My Favorite Year” is personal — and if this is what it sounds like to remember the good and bad of it, count me in.

The cover to Trouble in Dreams is a watercolor by Bejar’s ladyfriend (and partner in Hello Blue Roses) Sydney Vermont. It’s a snarling pirate, surrounded by bottles, two of them half empty/half full. The pirate has the third in hand. He’s stuffing a message into it — or maybe he’s making a fire bomb? Either way he looks like he’s daring you to dare him to throw it. Don’t be scared off: my feeling is he’s only bluffing. And either way, you’ll probably feel something when the contents finally make contact.

Photos by Ryan Dombal, who didn’t like the show quite as much as E. Tan and I did.