Kaputt

Dan Bejar made his best and strangest record by committing fully to a genre no one had taken seriously in thirty years — the sophisti-pop of late-period Roxy Music and Avalon-era Bryan Ferry, all fretless bass and echoing trumpet and whispered vocals about nothing in particular. “Kaputt” is the title track and the most cinematic thing on it.

Bejar sings like he is passing through the song on his way somewhere else. The trumpet does most of the emotional work. The song doesn’t go anywhere — it just maintains, for six and a half minutes, a specific quality of light that turns the fluorescent grocery store into a bar in 1984 Los Angeles. The ordinary day is scored. The feeling holds.