I've created innumerable paragraphs for a review of the new album from Dan Bejar and Destroyer since its release. Obviously, I haven't had the easiest of times in piecing together the appropriate terms or even unearthing how this album truly affects me. Of course, the constant questioning led me to start wondering if it even affected me at all. The lyrics are impenetrable at times and Bejar crafts narratives that could lend themselves well to doctoral literary study. Not to mention that the self-referencing to past Destroyer songs seems almost unprecedented in modern music. Finally, after just listening to the album on repeat over the past couple days, I realize that Destroyer's Rubies is not about the ends justifying the means. None of us have to know where the music is taking us as long as it's taking us there.

After the success he had with The New Pornographers and Twin Cinema last year, it would have been easy to regurgitate that successful formula and dispense it to the masses with relative ease. Instead, Destroyer fires the opening salvo of "Rubies" and casts the die with rambling poetic precision. References poke out their heads out through the acoustic strums and Bejar's melodic incantations dart and dash with just enough rapidity to warrant repeated listens for amateur lyrical analysts. I would put a sampling of said lyrics in this review, but they won't do much to accentuate my descriptions. They are self-contained stories that may last a single panoptic verse or across the expanse of choruses. And that's just the title track. Throughout the entire Rubies experience, Destroyer erupts from every crevice with idiosyncratic iambs, lucid lyrics, and apocalyptic alliterations. See, with all the wordplay going on in each song, I wanted to work some of my own Mrazian mystique.

Honestly, the attempts at poetic deconstruction could form an entire review itself, but there are enough reviews out there that focus solely on the mercurial contents of these songs. The disenchanting truth is that if those are the only reviews that someone reads in relation to the album, they will entirely ignore the fact that these are, in fact, songs, and by majority definition, songs have musical aspects to them. Although the instrumental backing may be merely peripheral to most listeners, there are some excellent tunes within these 53 minutes. "Your Blood" shambles around like a boot-stomping drunken bar jam, "30,000 Flowers" squeaks and squeals with agreeable dissonance, and "Priest's Knees" is an amalgamation of slippery rock and cocky piano jazz. The tunes may not always be in perfect tune and Bejar's voice takes some getting used to, but all the elements form together in a beautiful concoction with repeated listens.

Destroyer only seems to slip up when the choruses slip into "da-da-da-da" repeats. Although they're musical in pitch, they slow down some of the songs at inopportune moments. Also, as happens with hyper-literate people, Bejar extends the lengths of some of the songs a minute or two longer than they need to be. "Rubies" is a fetching gambit, and this would be true even if it wasn't over nine minutes long. The lack of restraint is sometimes a mixed blessing.

Of course, outside of the few missteps, Destroyer's Rubies is a rewarding experience. Each song has many layers that scream to be peeled apart and examined by the listener. There is a lot to be discovered. However, the joy in this album is that you don't absolutely have to research each song to feel edified. One could even argue that the more you analyze, the less enjoyable the songs become. Listening to music as poetry should be a subjective experience and there is hardly ever an experience more subjective than listening to these ten songs. Dan Bejar and company have proven once again that "If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music." That was Gustav Mahler helping me to poignantly wrap up this review. Thanks for the trip, Dan. And, yeah, thank you, Gustav.

PS If you really want to look into Dan Bejar's lyrics and references in greater detail, I would recommend going to the Wikipedia-esque Dan Bejar lyric engine.