Have We Met

All of this adds up: if you’ve enjoyed anything Dan Bejar has done under the Destroyer moniker, you’ll love Have We Met. If you’ve never heard a Destroyer album before, you’ll probably love it too.

Have We Met, though perhaps less ambitious than Destroyer’s best work, is nevertheless their freshest and most enjoyable record in years.

It's only after several listens that the album's wholeness clarifies. Because the tracks tend to be downtempo, reflective, and downright sleepy, it takes time and patience to realize Bejar is working like a good storyteller.

The result is a markedly retro-futurist sound, from the OMD-ish ‘Kinda Dark’ to ‘It Just Doesn’t Happen’, the synth line on which sounds suspiciously similar to a new wave rendition of Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’. At times, the music veers so close to kitsch that it may very well alienate some listeners from the get-go. Bejar’s songwriting remains as deft, cryptic and mosaic as ever though.

Have We Met is an album to recommend to those who want the meat and potatoes of what the project is about; it could've been self-titled.

Have We Met is another new departure, yet it still has that familiar strange storytelling swagger that’s at the heart of Destroyer.

On Have We Met, Bejar responds to a world on fire with a strange, and at times unnerving, calm. The absurdity of this moment suits him well.

Have We Met is Destroyer at its inscrutable, poetic best, its elegance poised on a rip-tide of violence.

Even at their poppiest, Destroyer remain an acquired taste. This time around, it’s one more than worth acquiring.

Irresistible examples of Bejar's blend of soft rock, dream-pop and more idiosyncratic elements. [Mar 2020, p.27]

The good news is that Have We Met shares melodic strengths with his previous high-water marks. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Like eclipse glasses, these songs are a way to see things too intense to stare at directly. Peer through them, though, and there's Bejar's world, darkness and beauty visible. [Mar 2020, p.121]

Bejar the enigmatic, drunken poet has for several Destroyer albums now taken a back seat to Bejar the singer and bandleader. And while the singing on Have We Met remains tastefully restrained, lyrically there are glimpses of the younger, brasher Bejar here.

The result is a hermetic record that is practically self-contained within a computer hard drive. Yet Have We Met never lacks for atmosphere, or a sense of unpredictability that feels kinetic.

His wry lyrics ("You're looking good in spite of the light") add an uncanny whimsy. [Feb 2020, p.85]

While Have We Met doesn't sound quite like top-shelf Destroyer, it's a fine testament to Bejar's talent and his gift for having things both ways at once, lyrically droll and musically cool and on point.