Destroyer

Dan Bejar loves to destroy nothing more than our notions of what his band, Destroyer, is. His latest album, Destroyer’s Rubies, takes a hard left turn from the synthesizer symphonies of 2004’s Your Blues, opting instead for stripped-bare arrangements that further highlight Bejar’s witty lyrics. Melody and conventional song structure take a backseat to the songwriter’s loose, rambling, crotchety libretto — cryptic free verse that lies somewhere between early Dylan and an unmedicated schizophrenic. With boundless ambition and an utter disregard for the pop conventions so brilliantly observed by his compadres in the New Pornographers, Bejar makes a beautiful, cynical and darkly humorous mess of his world and ours. And, as he has for the past 10 years, he totally destroys.