Destroyer and Eleanor Friedberger

In a review for Have We Met, Destroyer’s 13th studio record released in January, Pitchfork claimed that if you “spend enough time listening to Destroyer and the world will start to resemble a Dan Bejar song.” If this is true, the world is then an observational diary scrawled on bar napkins with an old lover’s lipstick, hurtling through outer space (if outer space were designed by filmmaker Michel Gondry.) Bejar, who has fronted this Avant indie-rock project for 25 years, might just have the strongest release of the decade so far, due in part to the fact that Have We Met has a deliberately crafted identity, which is more than can be said for, say, Tame Impala’s latest yawn, The Slow Rush. Destroyer will be joined by former Fiery Furnaces vocalist Eleanor Friedberger, who released her fourth record, Rebound, in 2018. Since disbanding from her fellow Furnace, brother Matthew Friedberger, she’s dropped a few solo releases, but with Rebound, Friedberger explores the complicated lament that comes with being a post-2016 election ex-pat living in Greece and flirts with a space between dancey David Byrne-style observations and self-investigation.