Following on the heels of “New Angels of Promise,” “Brilliant Adventure” is another callback to “Heroes” — specifically “Moss Garden,” one of the instrumentals on the B side.

Both use the Japanese instrument the koto, but whereas “Moss” is a fully realized piece (if not a “song,” exactly), “Brilliant” is more of a sketch — a little palate cleanser for the album closer, “The Dreamers.”

This is a perplexing choice for a finale. It doesn’t sound like a climax, whereas “If I’m Dreaming My Life” did — swapping their places in the running order (or leaving “The Dreamers” out entirely, while promoting “If I’m Dreaming” to last place) would have made a lot more sense, if you ask me.

But David felt differently. He must have thought a lot of “The Dreamers” to put it at the end, but I find it a hard song to warm up to. It starts promisingly, with a shuffling electronic rhythm and series of booming three-note sequences that promise more than the song is going to deliver. But a little more than 30 seconds in, it settles into a sludgy mid-tempo groove that quickly becomes monotonous. By the time its five-plus minutes are up, you’re ready for the album to be over.

True, some spirits are invoked along the way. The use of the word “dreamer” in a rock’n’roll song cannot help but recall Lennon… but here the dreamer is finally, at the end of it all, the only one.

“So it goes” is Vonnegut, telling us that someone has died. So it goes.

“Shallow man” invokes David’s own song “Shadow Man,” a very early song that he never officially released but would revisit on his next album, Toy (also never officially released). That’s where this thread is heading next.