Finally got around to listening to the advance of the new Destroyer album that Merge was kind enough to send along. I'm not going to write a big ol' analytical spot-the-conceit piece about it or nothin'; there'd hardly be any point. I just want to say: 1) it's pretty clearly Bejar's best work since Streethawk, and 2) it may well be better than Streethawk, though you'd probably wanna give it six months or so before you went and made any pronouncements quite so grand. Whether you do or don't choose to exercise that restraint, though, I hope you'll take as much pleasure as I do in seeing an artist like this so riotously back on his game. Your Blues was good enough, sure, but This Night, whatever its uses as a sheep-from-the-goats tool, was rather beneath Bejar's talents. I worried that he'd peaked early. Rubies, though, is straight gravy, virtuoso lyricism and weightless melodies from ceiling to floor. With practically every exaggerated phrase, Bejar invokes poetic traditions unknown to all but the most sunken-eyed MFA students; everybody will claim they know what he's talking about, and almost everyone will be lying. The groove, meanwhile, is too irresistable for mere words. Fucking bravo.