destroyer by josh johnson

A Week With Destroyer's "Trouble In Dreams": Day 5

13 June 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Allison Felus // Illustration by Josh Johnson

But . . . but . . . there’s all this other stuff in Trouble in Dreams! The various ladies that inevitably make their presences known on any Destroyer album—here Tulip, Susan, Nicole, Gretchen, Jenny, Libby, and, yes, the Mother Superior—several vintage instances of outré sexual verbiage, a lot of natural/ecological imagery, and I’m sure dozens of other threads weaving through these eleven songs that I’ve yet to even notice or put together. Would five days ever be enough to really do a Destroyer album justice? This is music to live with for years upon years.

For all the disturbing content and themes here, why does Trouble in Dreams leave me feeling energized and exhilarated instead of crumpled up in a ball of despair? Such is the power of the human intellect—both Bejar’s as auteur and ours as committed listeners. It’s easy to go into affect overload on a steady diet of indie rock with so many bands seeking to revive our souls and leave us sputtering hosannas at the end of every climactic chorus. (Hey, for what it’s worth, I happen to like a lot of those bands, too.) But, that just means Destroyer’s eagerness to interrogate and exploit the space between our heads and hearts is that much more vital.

Vital because it’s too respectful to force feed us any kind of predetermined response, vital because it allows us the time and space to tinker with the recombinant parts of these songs on our own.

If the average album, on a good day, turns us, emotionally and intellectually, into the princess and the pea—our slumber disturbed by only the slightest and politest of bumps—here Bejar and co. are sneaking jousting equipment, car parts, splintered two-by-fours, and half the produce section underneath our mattresses slowly, stealthily, flirtatiously, intently, just to see what we make of it all. If our dreams are troubled, well, they should be. Who could possibly sleep on all that? Who would want to?

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