foam hands

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

I think the conversation at the time concerned how Trouble in Dreams sonically identified as Rubies, Pt. II, which isn't entirely accurate I think. It is Rubies but more, more, more, so much that we end up overdoing it and the experiment inverts and makes antimatter on "Shooting Rockets." Trouble in Dreams is as much Rubies as Rubies was a properly executed This Night (the chief appeal of which is its improper execution).

[elpollodiablo]

WE SPIES
WE FOAM HANDS

[Ah_Pook]

shooting rockets is one of the best destroyer songs, straight up. beyond that i dont honestly remember a lot of the album off hand. i remember liking it pretty well at the time, but it didnt stick with me. still though, i think its a solid album.

[another max]

i fell deeply in love with that album and felt like a bit of an island, as even here at this fortress of bejar love it seemed to underwhelm.  thanks for this lovely paean.

[Danen]

The problem with great artists like Destroyer (and I realize that I've posted entirely too much on the guy, but really we must have our poets who can cut with wit as well as fully realize a line) is that we take them so for granted. I'll still stand by "Rubies" as a masterwork and "Streethawk" as some sort of perfection beamed down from some hyperbolic place that has created a superlative so perfect we don't even know what it is, but that its manifestation must be in "Streethawk." There. That said, the older I get and the more I listen to Bejar's catalog the more I believe the man hasn't put out a bad album and that time is only kind to them.  From the get-go, I thought the opening four songs were among his best work, on the level of "Rubies" and suggesting the next step from it. The long middle section is at first off-putting, but it grows on the listener and every damn minute of "Shooting Rockets" becomes perfection. And the last songs? I put them on after reading this lovely paen and they've held up well. I'm surprised "Rivers" didn't take me sooner in some ways. Does it mean anything? Does it matter? It's like Pynchon at his best and trimmed down to manageable size: you laugh right away but you don't cry until later, when you're reflecting on all those nonsequiters you wrote off and you realize that not only is it saying something, it's saying something different to everyone and yet it's saying SOMETHING to everyone. That's the trick with words like his and I see few who can do it, who can seem that damn cool and aloof and yet kick you in the gut when you least expect it. Two others who could do it are Bowie and Lennon and yeah, Bejar's heard them a few hundred times. But he's turned them into something unlike anything else, and in a time when so many bands blur together and I forget their names and when I don't have time to listen to as much as I like it's good to know that Bejar can go three years between records and I'm still finding new things in what's come before.