John Lennon may have once inadvertently described Dan Bejar's former disposition with surprising accuracy in "Yer Blues," depressingly singing, "But I am of the universe/And you know what it's worth." In the title-track from his own Your Blues, it seems that Bejar is finally feeling more optimistic, repeating, "Lord knows I've been trying..." amid an echoing piano and resonant horns.
Perhaps the most exciting and original player in the current Canadian indie rock explosion, Dan Bejar is the frontman and only permanent member of Vancouver, British Columbia's Destroyer, as well as a principal in the popular super-group The New Pornographers (along with Zumpano's Carl Newman and alt-country songstress Neko Case).
Often compared to early David Bowie, Destroyer combines imaginative pop/rock and folk songwriting with a literary and often nonsensical lyrical style, best exemplified by 2001's fantastic Streethawk: A Desire.
Like 2002's This Night, 2004's Your Blues is a challenging listen. Straying from the simple pop of albums like Streethawk and Thief, This Night abandoned tight compositions in favor of a loose and often sloppy approach. It resulted in a lengthy, self-indulgent and often depressing disc, sounding more like a collection of ideas than a true album.
Your Blues is in fact its structural opposite, bridging the gap between songwriting and experimentalism that This Night failed to cross, and resulting in one of Bejar's finest works with any band.
Essentially his first true solo album since his 1996 debut We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge, Bejar's Blues was recorded with only acoustic guitars, synthesizers and percussion, yet is still his most elaborately arranged endeavor. The sounds of strings, horns, flutes and harps all layer around his unique, nasal vocals, and although it sometimes works like the soundtrack to a Final Fantasy game (my roommate even suggested SimCity), Bejar largely avoids synth-oriented pop music's biggest mistakes. Amazingly, Your Blues is ambitious and dramatic, yet not for a second cheesy.
Bejar opens with the epic "Notorious Lightning," gently strumming his guitar as stirring pianos and simulated choruses gradually build. The song hits an early climax as an electric cello cuts in over striking orchestra hits. Finally screaming, "And someone's got to fall before someone goes free!" during the song's exhausting coda, Bejar introduces us to the crescendoed songwriting that characterizes Your Blues.
The evocative "An Actor's Revenge" is all over the musical map, consisting of a rapid military snare drum, piercing flugelhorns, pizzicato strings and Bejar's scat choruses. Beginning with a Klezmer violin and childlike piano, "From Oakland to Warsaw" is equally as varied, soon melting into a mlange of harps, clarinets and light bossanova guitar. It's unfortunate that Bejar was never this ambitious when he still used a band, but his stunning, singular vision supersedes any need for organic instruments.
In fact, it would be fair to say that Bejar has abandoned rock entirely. Along with the absence of Destroyer's usual instrumentation, familiar pop structures are almost completely absent from the album, replaced with the epic suites of songs like "New Ways of Living."
If anything, the only resemblances between Your Blues and albums like Streethawk and This Night can be found lyrically. "Feeling fine/But it must be the wine/Cause it's April 27th/And my baby's still dying on me," Bejar laments in a surprising moment of clarity found in "The Music Lovers." Abstraction is never far off for Bejar, however, and he continues, "We stole a gondola to sea/And ditched the chaperones/On jewel-encrusted roans/Who called us unprofessional." The enigmatic quality surrounding Dan Bejar's lyrics has always been a source of acclaim, and his poetry is at its best on Blues.
Largely defying comparison, Your Blues wanders into familiar territory only once. The chilling "The Fox and Hound," however, does not even evoke Bejar's own older Bowie-influenced material, instead creating a ghostly dirge recalling The Cure's Pornography or Disintegration albums.
"Tonight we work large!/We aim high!" Dan Bejar proclaims in "What Road," perhaps the best cut from Destroyer's Your Blues. It just might be autobiographical, as Bejar holds nothing back on his sixth album. Its unorthodox production will alienate some fans, and likewise, the album fails to serve as the best introduction to the Destroyer oeuvre. It may take listeners some time for Bejar's Blues to set in, but ultimately, most will find it Destroyer's finest and most accomplished release to date.