It Was A Very Good Year

Destroyer - "My Favourite Year"

It's not so much that Trouble in Dreams is a difficult album to understand--it's very easy to understand. (Just in terms of writing, it's probably Destroyer's least lyrically dense album. There are no lengthy, complicated narratives with confusing tangents to follow--the form that a lot of Destroyer material has taken.) It's that it seems that Dan Bejar wants Dreams to be understood purely on an emotional level, and it's pretty much impossible to describe, accurately, an emotional connection to something. Your enjoyment of it, or any meaningfulness that you find in it, can't be put down in words, and that's sorta the point. The aim of Dreams seems to be to be a vehicle for Bejar's rich language to sort of jostle around in your head, while your mind makes various connections, perhaps reminding you of something you once read, or something you experienced five years ago that you forgot about. Or maybe it reminds you of something you never actually experienced, but only think you forgot about. I don't quite want to suggest that there is some universal, subconscious appeal to Trouble in Dreams. But the subconscious element is definitely there. I think some people would love the album if they gave it, say, three more listens, and some people obviously wouldn't.

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photo by Leonard Freed, painting by Andrew Wyeth