Your Blues

Schizophrenic, stark, and even with its pretentious theatrics, this is an amazing record. [#9, p.104]

The record's conceptual brilliance lies largely in Bejar's ability to craft deeply moving passages out of ostensibly artificial and contrived elements, subtly suggesting that all music, if not all human expression, is in effect some sort of artifice.

As dark and sweet as baking chocolate and as ambitious as the Mars rover. [Apr 2004, p.94]

So yeah, the cheese gets awfully thick, but unlike most other groups purposely pushing the boundaries of bad taste in the past few years, Dan Bejar remembers to at least bring along some great songs.

Whilst Bejar's songs are blessed with mucho rhythm and melody, you should still be made aware that there's no real beat, no real bass, and little that sounds organic. Yet there's still something quite regal and symphonic about it all, the synthesized strings and horns and piano stirring up a romanticism that goes with Bejar's fancy-pants lyricism.

Filled with quirky and inventive pop songs packed with sultry harmonies and an immense level of musical intuitiveness.

2004's early front-runner for art rock album of the year.

Although the faux strings, drums and horns do feel a bit contrived at points the overwhelming feel is one of ambition rather than pretension.

Destroyer's slickest synthesis yet of ornate hooks and cryptic poetics. [Apr 2004, p.127]

It doesn't always work.... But when it does, in the blended tones and dark piano chords of "The Fox and the Hound", the result is magical and otherworldly.

Your Blues is a bold step in a new direction, risking over-the-top theatricality, but with its feet planted firmly on solid ground.

Bejar's shifting style seems like a work in progress, and a lot of these songs are too much of nothing. [17 Mar 2004]