2. Destroyer’s Rubies (2006)

Following highly successful experiments with This Night and Your Blues, 2006’s Rubies brings it all back home with a remarkably muscular collection of top-notch performances, pitch-perfect production, and Bejar’s best collection of songs to date. The tour-de-force nine-plus-minute opening title track sets the table and plays as both manifesto (“Cast myself to infinity/ I have my reasons”) and warning shot: Bejar has got a lot on his mind, and every intention of speaking his piece. It is a thrilling beginning, full of mystery, prophecy and even a sarcastic shout out to the “precious American underground”*. From there we get a little bit of everything — the band blitzkrieging through the hectic new wave shuffle of “3000 Flowers” and lounging purposefully through the druggy psych-blues of “Sick Priest Learns To Last Forever.” The stunning “European Oils” may be the best thing Bejar has ever done — a gorgeously wistful love song simmering with menace. Rubies was an extraordinary refinement of his musical and lyrical themes, executed at an impossibly high level. It was difficult to figure out how Bejar was going to top it.

*When we once described Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards” as the ultimate proto-Destroyer song, this is the kind of thing we had in mind.