Johnson, Dean - I Hope We Can Still Be Friends

Like John Prine or Kris Kristofferson’s country-adjacent sound, devastating humour and economical profundity refracted through a bar room’s haze, the album is filled with easygoing twang, sad characters, universal truths and the absurdity of everyday life. “Carol” recounts the numb consumption and dissipating cultural attention that is besieging America. There’s a search for optimism amid meditations on dying in a plane crash in “Before You Hit the Ground.” Romance that is best forgotten steers “So Much Better” — only Johnson could weave electroconvulsive therapy into a gentle, chuckle-inducing missive on unbearable heartbreak. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends floats in a liminal plane between timely and timeless, its minimalist instrumentation elevating Johnson’s affecting voice to new heights. Recorded at Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington, the record was produced by Sera Cahoone — the Seattle-based singer-songwriter Johnson describes as a “soulmate sibling.” Overdubbing took place at Seattle’s Crackle & Pop! For the sessions, Johnson assembled a small band of friends including Abbey Blackwell (bass, backing vocals), multi-instrumentalist Sam Peterson and Cahoone (drums, backing vocals), who created a familial tone on the already intimate album. I Hope We Can Still Be Friends, with its sharp observations and stirring personal insights, holds space for both intense reflection and emotional release. You may laugh, or cry or both. In this sense, the album is powerful medicine — a way to both expose yourself to and inoculate yourself against the ugly, absurd, existential and heartbreaking. At its core rests a basic truth that is often difficult to remember or accept: Happiness wouldn’t exist without sadness as its counterpart. On his uncanny ability to so clearly see and then encapsulate humanity in all its messy glory, Johnson offers this core memory, drawn from his childhood on Camano Island in the Puget Sound. “I was raised on a bluff,” he says. “I’m not trying to make it sound dramatic, but I did have a sweeping view.”