“Foam Hands“
from the album Trouble in Dreams
2008
iTunes
Even for an eccentric, Dan Bejar is eccentric. His songs as Destroyer and as a member of the New Pornographers don’t push rock’s musical conventions forward so much as invest them with his own stubbornly postmodern personality, which I guess is almost the same thing; Bejar makes the familiar strange through cryptic allusions and a distinctive voice rather than the surer (and, let it be said, equally valid) route of pedals, electronics, or genre-dabbling. That’s why a favorite reference point for 2006’s fantastic Destroyer’s Rubies was Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, another album that saw an idiosyncratic songwriter backed by a highly capable band, putting classical guitar and folk-rock elements through his own screwy vision (and inspiring plenty of great writing).
“Foam Hands,” from forthcoming eighth Destroyer album Trouble in Dreams, continues the Vancouver-based songwriter’s Rubies approach, framing a referential message to a distant (former?) lover in bluesy lead guitar, gentle acoustic downstrokes, and organs. “True love regrets to inform you, there are certain things you must do/ To perceive his face in the stains on the wall,” Bejar begins, getting right to the chorus: “I didn’t know what time it was at all.” There’s also whistling, the phrase “since you been gone,” and some brief, echoey backing vocals that could almost be mistaken for a choir, as if Bejar is seeing how much MOR he can get away with. When he’s singing songs like this one — which he previously recorded with singer Sydney Vermont in their Hello Blue Roses guise — my hunch is, a lot.