Strange Victory, Strange Defeat

Has David Berman’s newfound happiness dulled his cynical sensibilities?
Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea may hold the answer.

The millennial American indie rock generation has never really had an equivalent to ’70s songwriter Randy Newman. There have been plenty of smartalecks and wise-acres, but no one seems to stand out as possessing Newman’s wicked wit and corrosive sarcasm, combined with his understanding of the cliches and machinations of popular music. Some might posit Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt as their generation’s Newman, but he’s a bit too smug and urbane. The closest we get could be David Berman, who with his ever-revolving group Silver Jews channels some of Newman’s tenets through a country and rock setting rather than the ballads, standards and show tunes Newman referenced.

Berman tells stories of losers, misfits and malcontents, mapping his own disillusionment, befuddlement and occasional joy at the weird wilderness that is America. His self-effacing attitude and bold, oh-no-you-didn’t turn of a phrase made him a sort of icon for suburban-reared graduate school dropouts and underachievers who anxiously awaited a new album when he could get around to recording one every two or three years.

Following The Arizona Record, a lower than lo-fi EP debut in 1993, Berman teamed with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastovich from Pavement on 1994’s Starlite Walker, an excessively pleasing Americana ramble though the backwoods and alleys of early ’90s indie rock. He was finding his footing on those releases before recording a trilogy that will remain a high-water mark for clever, literate songwriting from their era — and though The Natural Bridge (1996), American Water (1998) and Bright Flight (2001) combined probably haven’t cracked 100,000 in record sales, they will likely be discovered and heralded by future generations as overlooked masterpieces.

Then, Tanglewood Numbers was released in 2005, four years after Bright Flight. And frankly, it was a bit of a disappointment.

Silver Jews have always been an acquired taste — Berman’s voice is flat and monotone, perfect for his songs, but off-putting to many. Silver Jews music usually runs a fairly limited gauntlet of mid-tempo guitar-driven tunes that at times borrow too much from indie rock. (This is a band, after all, that was long referred to as a “Pavement side project.”) It all works when the songs are first-rate, but on Tanglewood the songwriting didn’t seem as inspired, and the loose, ramshackle nature of the music took on more user-friendly — though still cheeky — pop tones.

Later we would come to find Berman had been on a months-long vodka, Dilaudid, crack and other miscellaneous substances binge before suffering a breakdown that led to his near death. Musicians often complain about the focus on their biographies when critics discuss their work, but in this case, knowledge of Berman’s troubles actually cast a more positive light on the album. One could read Tanglewood as a modest celebration of his finding his way out of the wilderness, a victory lap on returning from the abyss after poking around its edges for years.

Three years later comes Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, and though it’s enjoyable, it’s not quite the return to form for which we had hoped. I will say I think “Suffering Jukebox,” the third track here, is one of his masterpieces, the distillation of everything that is good about a Silver Jews song. From the church organ intro, the old-school country & western guitar and the mournful, dragging multi-layered female vocals (courtesy of Berman’s wife Cassie) singing the chorus, the song is the Jews’ most straightforward country effort yet. The choruses alter slightly each time, as Cassie considers the plight of a machine burdened with the task of holding the tales of heartaches and troubles of a numb populace who ignore it:

Suffering jukebox such a sad machine
You’re filled up with what other people need
Hardship, damnation and guilt
make you wonder why you were even built