Dan Deacon deserves credit for seeing the positives in what, from the outside, seems like a complete and utter shitshow.

As one might expect, the recent Baltimore riots come up when the electronic-music iconoclast is reached at a San Diego tour stop. Not only has the New York–born Deacon been based in the Maryland city for years, but he’s also become one of its most passionate boosters.

The 11 o’clock news has been portraying Baltimore as something of a locked-down war zone, with rioting, arson, and looting in the wake of 25-year-old Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Things were so bad that no less than U.S. president Barack Obama weighed in with “They’re not protesting. They’re not making a statement. They’re stealing.”

Deacon—who’s currently on tour for his gorgeous new album, Gliss Riffer—has a different view.

“I don’t know if I’d consider them violent riots—I think all the violence is from the police,” he argues, speaking on his cellphone. “The media keeps trying to portray this as the actions of a bunch of citizens, but you can’t continue to get pushed and shoved and not push back. And then, the moment someone pushes back, that’s when the cameras roll.”

When Deacon came through Vancouver three years ago for 2012’s ambitious America, he was on an artistic high. A series of setbacks would follow.

“I worked on a lot of projects that turned into very explosive failures,” Deacon recalls with resigned bemusement. “For about a year and a half, I was supposed to have a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was going to be a very large undertaking, but the museum pulled out two days before for fear that it was going to be crazy and that it wasn’t going to work for them logistically. That was a giant period of my life right down the drain.

“Then, last year, I was supposed to be on tour with Animal Collective,” he continues, “and they had to cancel the tour twice. Most of these projects take at least six months of planning, so it’s not like I can go, ‘Well, I’ll just hop on the road instead.’ So I was in this sort of limbo period for a long time, and I think that led to why I made the record [Gliss Riffer] alone, the way I did. I wanted something that was just me, something that I could wrap my arms around and pull it in tight.”

Despite the dark clouds hanging over him, Gliss Riffer is unrelentingly upbeat, right from the crystalline opening banger, “Feel the Lightning”. Beautiful moments abound, whether in the stream-of-consciousness techno-tribal freak-out “When I Was Done Dying” or in the exotic Asian vibe that underpins the synth-heavy “Meme Generator”.

Deacon’s enthusiasm for the record is reflected in the way he talks about his current tour. The singer, who is famous for his interactive live spectacles (think impromptu dance competitions and carefully curated circle pits), says, “It’s the largest level of production that I’ve ever toured with, even though I’m still touring on a school bus.”

As for those past failures, like the Baltimore riots, sometimes it’s all about having the right perspective.

“I feel like the only way you really learn is to look at your failures and then try and figure out why they failed, and what you could have done to make things right,” Deacon says. “The Animal Collective thing was out of my control. And I thought about doing the Met thing at a warehouse, but so much of the performance was about the site-specific nature of the piece. Even now, I’m back in a logistical quagmire with this tour. But that’s the art I like to make—something that’s just a little too big for the box I’m trying to put it in.”

Dan Deacon plays Electric Owl on Thursday (May 7).