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“Okay, fine.” That’s how Trou­ble In Dreams begins.

“Okay, fine.” A far cry from the “rev­o­lu­tion, rev­o­lu­tion, rev­o­lu­tion” that launched Destroyer. Kind of resigned, actu­ally. And resignation’s a theme through­out Trou­ble In Dreams.

“Nah, it’s cool.” “The state cut off my arms.” “Foam hands.” “Now it’s gone, and the whole point of everything’s the mov­ing on.” “We live in dark­ness. The light is a dream.” “Com­mon scars brought us together.” “Hands tied behind your head.” “The leop­ard of honor speaks to a crowd of the dead.” “I was stuck inside a river’s flow.” “You’ve been wan­der­ing around, you’ve been fuck­ing around.” In every song, there are con­cil­ia­tory lyrics, help­less feel­ings, accep­tance of real­ity. It’s not that real­ity is accepted because it’s okay, but because there’s noth­ing else to accept.

The music on Trou­ble In Dreams fits some­where between the free-spirited ease of This Night and the pro­fes­sional rock of Rubies. It’s unapolo­get­i­cally pretty. The singing–bearing in mind that Bejar’s vocals are a mat­ter of taste–is even kind of pretty. In a sense, the rev­o­lu­tion is over. The sta­tus quo hasn’t changed, the tem­ple has not fallen, but Dan Bejar seems more com­fort­able in him­self than ever. That doesn’t mean com­pla­cency; Bejar is still mak­ing great music.

“My Favorite Year” cap­tures what I mean. It’s a beau­ti­ful song, and its lyrics wist­fully blend accep­tance with anger…

You, in white, and me, in gray, go well tonight,
so let’s linger here,
this used to be my favorite palm tree–
I was starv­ing in that shit-house, the world–
but now it’s gone,
and the whole point of everything’s the mov­ing on.
[…]
It was a very good year.
And now it’s gone.
You say the whole point of everything’s the mov­ing on,
and I can’t help but feel some­what opposed to this,
my shit hav­ing been torched by fas­cists,
though, in some small way, we’re all trai­tors to our own kind.