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Lately there's been a lot of talk about Destroyer. The new album, Destroyer's Rubies, is the highest rated rock album on metacritic.com (which keeps track of music critics collective ratings), and has been hailed by the taste-making likes of NME and Pitchfork. But when most people are talking about Destroyer, they're really talking about Dan Bejar - much in the same way that Bright Eyes is all about Conor Oberst and Beck is all about, well... Beck.

Dan Bejar was just entering the world of alternative-folk (or "anti-folk" as it was called then) at the time that Beck was exploding with his own brand of bizarre folk-punk. Nowadays, Bejar (who is also a contributor to The New Pornographers) has traded in those sparse and jangly lo-fi four-track recordings for the bombastic and melodic indie tunes that his growing following has come to love him for.

Though Destroyer's abstract, acid-laced lyrics have long been the star of the show, Rubies finds those considerable strengths matched by an exceedingly precise production, and structural dexterity that is rarely found within the modern musical world which Bejar is so often critical of. Incorporating everything from vibraphones and a Wurlitzer to standard electric guitar riffs, the band opens up a fluid and breezy musical landscape that's rich with texture and depth while preserving a rock edge.

The lyrics themselves display a level of abstruse verbosity that have both delighted some and frustrated others. Through his maze of ambiguous allusions and mysterious imagery, Bejar deftly sets up an emotional scene within which to spin his stories - even if you have absolutely no idea what that story's about. Rubies offers up some memorable lines that would be imminently quotable if you didn't feel a little embarrassed actually saying lines like "the initiates brought out in tumbrils shat out by the dawn" out loud. Yet at the same time, when he asks a girl "Where did you get that penchant for destruction in the way you talk?" on the song, "Painter in Your Pocket," you know exactly what he means. Nevertheless, the frequently-odd verses have become such an in-joke in the musical community that there's even a Bejar-o-matic on the internet which affectionately spits out Dan's latest curious gems (http://i-rock.wackiness.org/bejaromatic).

Bejar's vocal inflection has also garnered considerable attention, frequently alternating between deadpan observational crooning and high-key melodic blasts. The resultant tone is what one would expect to hear if you crossed Bob Dylan or Lou Reed with the likes of David Bowie. In the song "Watercolours into the Ocean" the Lou Reed presence is so heavily felt that it even leans towards being distracting and risks turning Bejar's strength into a weakness, creating one of the few cringe-worthy elements on an album remarkably free of mistakes.

Yet despite all the many successes found on Destroyer's Rubies, and despite its unparalleled craftsmanship as a whole, the album lacks any single great song that brings you back into it again and again. It's an album that is rich with doubles and triples, but none of the home runs needed to quite reach the level of unassailable greatness. Nevertheless, it's difficult to imagine any top ten at the end of 2006 being absent of this solid work. It is an admirable accomplishment and an appreciated extension of the sonic landscape beyond the whiney, bourgeois hipsters that have overpopulated the indie scene as of late.

4.5 of 5

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