Silver Jews in Philadelphia, 9/9/08: Preface

It's hard (for me) to write well about music with which I've developed a significant personal relationship. Not just stuff I like or love, of which I consider myself a fan or devotee, or for which I'm willing to withstand hours sweltering in a dimly-lit church basement to hear and see. It's not the music I obsessed over as a 13-year-old -- remember when "repeat" was considered a totally sweet feature?

Rather, I'm tripped up by the music that serves a desperate need. Plenty of great music has the power to seduce, creating desire for a sound and feel and then fulfilling that desire. I'm talking about the stuff that blindsides you because you'd been feeling a need for something for a long fucking time -- sure, call it an ache -- and then you hear a record that fills in the ache a little, or makes you feel a little less unhinged than you think you might be. The need at its core isn't met (no record will do this), but maybe you can fight it off more easily, or you understand the need better, or you can at least think about something else for 40 minutes.

Compared to the heavy ruminations I tend to stumble into (see above x10), describing the airy lift of an organ hook sometimes seems beside the point.



David Berman's work falls into this category. I could go on about brilliant-sad-funny lyrical moments, twangy and dark atmospherics, spooky mocking rockers, etc. But more often I find myself at a bit of a loss because his songs evoke a very specific, alienated, period of time for me. Not because the songs on American Water boast the best of the above traits but because the first time I heard it (because of and with Michelle, in Ann Arbor, and I was probably wearing hideous ankle boots and too much eyeliner) was in the grasping, chaotic early stages of a years-long period of depression. Silver Jews brought me a little bit of comfort (sure whatever let's call it that) as my mind adjusted around whatever it was that I needed, or profoundly lacked, or was hiding from. I still listen to all of their albums on a weekly-or-so basis, still derive enjoyment and comfort and artist-modulated doses of humble but wry despair. But now, parsing Berman's newer works and recent performances critically feels like analyzing depression: I do it in my head all the time, but when you break that shit to the rest of the world, you feel uncomfortable, exposed, unable to do justice to a thing that, well, if it was such a big deal, you should have a better handle on.

If I can't do justice to Berman's music in a standard 500-word review, then let the fact that this is the first thing I've written about in four months do it for me.

Next: The First Unitarian concertgoing experience, Monotonix, and the Jooz live in action.