January feels like a long time ago. Who knew then that Dan Bejar would end up sound tracking 2020? It should not have come as a surprise, his sardonic voice long a surveyor of apocalypses great and small. Did you realize it was hollow? Like everything that’s come before, you are gone. The idiot’s dissonant roar. That exquisite gong struck dumb . . . cue synthesizer . . .
Have We Met is Bejar’s third Destroyer masterwork alongside Rubies and Kaputt. His hermetic observations are fierce poetry. His longtime producer John Collins' soundscapes are the perfect foil. Though Bejar's signature drawl may be daunting for the uninitiated, his 13th album is one of his most accessible entry points because of the record's massive synthesizers, crackling drum loops, and wicked guitars, parts seemingly lifted from a studio dustbin after decades.
Eerily presupposing the pandemic, Bejar recorded vocals at night at his kitchen table in Vancouver, singing into a microphone connected to his laptop. He sent the clips to Collins, who worked on the songs on his iPad at his home in Seattle and turned the wordsmith's visions into exquisite odysseys. “I’d just give the whole thing to John and have him just blow it up, flesh it out—swap my crappy fake drums for cool drums, play bass, make the synths cool and not generic, and make the songs move.”
And move they do. The songs pulse with jittery life, hidden spaces, and unexpected consequences. They drive and turn and float in seductive ways, evoking similar noirish scenes listeners visited in Kaputt: late-night streets, dark corners, empty buildings, or rain-soaked city parks. I find the silence unbearable? What does that say about the silence? And your empty pen? And this ridiculous paper?
No couplet is wasted. Bejar's riveting lyrics capture more in essence the irony and tragedy of our personal isolation and institutional disintegration. Went to America, went to Europe, it's all the same shit. He is cynical about the big things and wryly optimistic about the little things, keeping the door slightly ajar for the forgotten or misunderstood. And he appreciates a little dramatic flair. We throw the game and, oh, how good it feels to be drunk on the field . . . again.
It seems Bejar eyed 2020 before it really got going, another rough beast slouching toward a strange kind of doom, and he wisely shrugged and kept his cool distance, releasing another magnum opus just before the fires started.
Here in the city of the dying embers.
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