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Trouble In Dreams
by Destroyer

Destroyer reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 78 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.2 out of 10
based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

Dan Bejar, the ex-New Pornographer, releases his ninth album.

LABEL: Merge
RELEASE DATE: 18 March 2008
DISCS: 1 disc
GENRE(S): Rock, Indie

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Delusions of Adequacy
Destroyer has clearly picked up where it left off and the music on this eleven song album is utterly exceptional.
Read Full Review
90
Filter
Trouble in Dreams pulls upon 2006's "Rubies'" emotional strings, and in fact, tugs deeper while still retaining the strange wall of declamatory description. [Winter 2008, p.91]
83
Entertainment Weekly
He's convincingly sensitive even at his most arch. [21 Mar 2008, p.57]
83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Destroyer sounds focused as a band this time out, but there's an uneasiness at play in songs that tend to wander.
Read Full Review
81
cokemachineglow
Trouble has its highs (the second chorus of “Rivers,” all eight minutes of “Shooting Rockets”) and lows (“The State,” a messy rocker that all but collapses in upon itself), but the band’s prowess and Bejar’s vision makes the songs an impressive, if jagged, piece of work.
Read Full Review
80
Hartford Courant
The band's previous entry, 2006's "Destroyer's Rubies," was impressive enough, but Trouble In Dreams is even better.
Read Full Review
80
Spin
On Destroyer's eight album, Bejar lives up to his stratospheric self-regard. [Apr 2008, p.94]
80
Dusted Magazine
Each album isn’t simply a solitary entry into the Destroyer oeuvre, but rather some tile in the mosaic or thread in the pattern.
Read Full Review
80
Drowned In Sound
Trouble In Dreams is full of amazing poetic adventures which could never flourish in the harsh light of the public eye.
Read Full Review
80
Under The Radar
He backs up all the contrived drama with the kind of gorgeously lush music critics dream about. [Winter 20008, p.81]
80
Alternative Press
He's free to let his freak flag fly with Destroyer, and Trouble in Dreams doesn't disappoint. [Apr 2008, p.152]
80
Amazon.com
Many, many gosh-darn dudes go in for the "vaguely weird indie-rock music with oblique lyrics" schtick, and yet it's still an utter joy to hear Dan Bejar do it.
Read Full Review
80
Rolling Stone
His latest seals the deal.
Read Full Review
80
Boston Globe
Luckily for him, his band Destroyer more than makes up for his occasionally strained croak, and "Trouble in Dreams," their follow-up to 2006's acclaimed "Destroyer's Rubies," is an unqualified triumph.
Read Full Review
80
Uncut
Bejar's band--either completely at ease with or oblivious to his verbal flights of fancy--play rich, languid, bar-room indie-rock with florid bursts of guitar. [May 2008, p.94]
80
NOW Magazine
TID is a solid collection of his trademark epic ballads ready to be your summer patio soundtrack.
Read Full Review
80
Slant Magazine
Trouble in Dreams is full of complex and sophisticated songs, so it's probably unfair to focus on one to the exclusion of others, but 'Shooting Rockets' deserves a little more attention, since it's the best evidence of the fact that, when it comes to proggy indie rock, Bejar's really in a league of his own right now.
Read Full Review
80
PopMatters
The grandness Sheff describes is all over Trouble in Dreams like a paint polish, and 'The State' is the only instance in which it falls a bit flat.
Read Full Review
80
Paste Magazine
Rubies was such a well-tooled formula that fans should be glad to have a worthy, likeminded successor: another hearty dose of musical-theater vocals, incandescent guitar solos, long swelling arrangements and jarring enfilades of exploding drums.
Read Full Review
80
Hot Press
Great ambitious, hyper-real psychedelia.
Read Full Review
77
Pitchfork
TID might be Bejar's most pompous, profane, and pastoral record, but it's also his least "intelligent," rational, or linearly clever.
Read Full Review
76
Lost At Sea
Though it has its strong and weak points, Trouble In Dreams will no doubt receive well-deserved commendation. As a whole, however, it is the result of a grand but imperfect design (which, as we all know, has merit of its own).
Read Full Review
70
Billboard
Bejar may consistently tinker with his sound, but the output has been reliably solid, and Dreams is no exception.
Read Full Review
70
Tiny Mix Tapes
A bit more polished, a little more cohesive, and a bunch more bizarre, but all still an attempt at reinventing rock ‘n’ roll from the inside out.
Read Full Review
70
All Music Guide
On Trouble in Dreams, Bejar and Destroyer have also shown that they can continue to write the literate, complex songs they and their audience love and expand and explore new melodic territory successfully.
Read Full Review
70
The New York Times
Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer when he’s not with the New Pornographers or his other projects, might have been perfectly suited for a career in pretty soft rock, mid-1970s style. The beginning of Destroyer’s eighth album, Trouble in Dreams (Merge), sounds like that’s what he decided to do, just strumming an acoustic guitar while electric guitars trace delicate leads.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle
Trouble follows the critically lauded 2006 masterstroke, "Destroyer's Rubies," and Bejar's band, returning from those sessions, makes it feel like a solid rock album.
Read Full Review
65
Almost Cool
If you can't get enough of Bejar, you'll obviously want to check this out, but most others will feel like they've been down this road before.
Read Full Review
60
Blender
Dan Bejar is in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode: He's made an album that sounds nearly identical to the one before it. [Apr 2008, p.78]
Read Full Review
45
cokemachineglow
I’ll be as straightforward in my assessment of his Trouble in Dreams as I can: this is his tenth solo album of the same old shit.
Read Full Review
40
Q Magazine
{Bejar's] fondness for drenching songs in production so muddy that they end up as little more than smears of noise. [May 2008, p.130]

What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this album is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

jyotirmaya D. gave it a7:
I like this album a little better than "Rubies" because it doesn't use the same chord refrains throughout the whole of the album as "rubies" did. It was almost like all of the songs had the same music. Now with "Trouble..." we get a more pin-pointed variegated sound, but we don't get any of the lush arrangements which made "Rubies" so damn good to listen to. I am going to have to go to my itunes and create a mix of the two albums and compile one excellent album to my liking. And I am happy that I can do that !!!

Sean gave it a9:
The overall metacritic score has it right. Not as great as the previous Destroyer record, but better than most of the music out there now.

Jeremy gave it a7:
It's okay. Almost completely hit and miss the whole way through. "Foam Hands" is easily the best track. And you're high if you think this is better than "Destroyer's Rubies" (I'm looking at you, Hartford Courant).

Gene B. gave it a9:
H K said it best - some of these critics seem to take Bejar's lyrical playfulness as a personal insult to their intelligence. The music is beautiful and complex.

Matt A. gave it a6:
Have to agree with the cokemachineglow counterpoint (although not quite to that extent). Rubies was Bejar's best album just because of the instrumentation. This album reverts back to, like the aforementioned review said, what he has always done, and it is just isn't that interesting or listenable. And yes, his "la la la la" choruses make me want to cut my ears off.

Fusco L. gave it a9:
Now that their eighth record came out, Fusco finally crosses the path of Dan Bejar and his Destroyer, that recently released «Trouble In Dreams». If there are records that grab us from the first chord, leading us through a dream from which we don`t want to wake up, this would not be one of them. It prefers to act like a small cold, a restless and invisible parasite, a viral syndrome that, from the first opportunity to show some action, it runs at high speed through the blood freeway, affecting all and any brain activity. I would say that «Trouble in Dreams» is 2000`s «Ziggy Stardust», a mixture of Bowie`s lust, Bauhaus saturnian delirium and Current 93`s weird way of telling stories. A record that touches the epic, to which I offer four and a half shooting rockets. A big thank you to my friend Uóli for showing me this little pearl.

Craig M. gave it a9:
Maybe the best album by Destroyer, and an early contender for album of the year. The melodies flow better than in the past and the instrumentation is fantastic. Highlights include, My Favourite Year, Foam Hands, Shooting Rockets and Libby's First Sunrise, although the entire album is filled with melodic alt-rock.

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