It Was OK

David Heti approaches stand-up like a cross-examination completely untethered from human empathy. Rather than asking for the audience’s affection, he uses the stage to administer a series of bleak, philosophical stress tests. His delivery is flat and emotionally distant, forcing the crowd to figure out if they are meant to laugh or if they have simply been trapped in a basement with a man articulating his deepest dread.

Recorded on New Year’s Day 2014 at Grumpy’s Bar in Montreal and released the following year, the debut album arrived just after Heti made a forced career pivot. While working as a lawyer for the Department of Justice Canada, he was handed an ultimatum because his act violated the public service’s ethics code. He chose the jokes. The material he traded his legal career for includes a childhood recollection of asking his mother what happens when people die, only to be told, “Daddy goes to jail”. It is an hour of cold, precise logic applied to the worst aspects of the human condition, determining the exact point where a crowd decides a punchline is too mean to support.