DESTROYER - Your Blues (Merge)

Destroyer's second through fifth albums were each more dense and less
weird than the one before. I thought the second one (City Of Daughters)
represented all that was good about Dan Bejar's music, and might have
had more energy for trying to appreciate Streethawk (#4) and This Night
(#5) if the trend hadn't been so clear and unidirectional. As a result,
this new record's sparseness and weirdness made me a little exuberant
even before I had any idea whether I liked the songs.

Which I do. Bejar's a difficult songwriter; it's always confounded me
that I didn't know why, and that he got harder to appreciate as he got
more sonically accessible. He's also amazingly talented, though, in a
way that leads him to keep stumbling on other people's secrets. Your
Blues' closing track, for example, would be perfect for Sade to sing --
that's Helen Folasade Adu of "Smooth Operator" fame, not the Marquis --
but if Dan Bejar had any such thing in mind when writing, the song
betrays no sign of it.

(I feel strange saying this next part, because it gives me no way to end
gracefully, but he also delivers one line in the exquisite "What Road"
in the exact style of Young MC's "Bust A Move", which I'm even more sure
is unintentional than the Sade thing.)