Dan Bejar has a reputation for making music only a critic would love. Bejar clearly doesn’t care about accusations of his being pretentious, since this album features an eight-minute-long song called “Shooting Rockets (From the Desk of Night’s Ape).” But then, he’s always greeted his derisive/obsessive observers with something between a shrug and faint amusement; his musical gifts have never gotten as much attention. Recorded with the same band as the 2006 opus Rubies, Trouble in Dreams has Destroyer touchstones — glam licks, allusive and self-referential lyrics with much scorn, brilliant use of pauses — while building on its predecessor’s use of fuller arrangements. “My Favourite Year” is a lesson in dynamics, dancing about from a quick-stepping bassline to soggy cymbals before lurching into a bizarre vocal interlude. As ever, the HMS Bejar floats on his voice — he can’t really sing, but the songwriter exults in wordplay, barking and muttering. He’s also funny as hell, punning on the name of his supergroup with the line “Saw you in Swan Lake, you were great!” Bejar still argues about art with himself, yet Trouble in Dreams, like Rubies, is more concerned with less abstract wounds and salves. Midway through “Shooting Rockets,” the urgent piano and lead-guitar wails disappear into total silence before bursting out even louder, “We live in darkness, the light is a dream you can see.” Destroyer, shatterer of words.