Starting Off

The first time that I heard Silver Jews I laughed out loud. The opening line of Random Rules is simply unbeatable: "In 1984, I was hospitalised for approaching perfection". Silver Jews (effectively the guise of David Berman) offer up a brand of unhinged country that manages to avoid all the tired cliches you might expect. The stories are strange, intelligent and charming. Berman's deep and faltering voice lends a very intimate quality to songs pitched in a low-key, plaintive and shambolic way. If you download the songs Random Rules or Tennessee, you'll get a good idea of what he's about. A number of songs have been made available on his website, which you can get to by following my Silver Jews link.

Recommended Albums

American Water
Rating: 8.5

Tanglewood Numbers
Rating: 8.3


The quality I like most about David Berman's music is his ability to completely disarm you with a line. After opening Random Rules (American Water), you get "I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls" in the next verse. The mood is never overbearingly dark but it's blindingly obvious that Berman wasn't exactly in a happy place. This is how he described what happened to him after the making of the album in a recent interview:

"My Y2K party lasted four years longer than I expected it to. I went down in 1999 for a long, suitcase-battering journey of sub-aqueous intoxication, only resurfacing on January 1, 2004 in a tiny Minnesota village. There were many phases, but the final one was crack. And Dilaudid when I needed to sand the edges off the horrorscape. Also vodka. The vodka is how you clean yourself. I actually thought it was cleaning my organs."

The album vears from the bouncy blues of Smith and Jones Forever to the doom filled country of The Wild Kindness. On People, there's a lovely chorus harmony over some reasonably focused guitar parts, but for the most part elsewhere, the album is charmingly messy. Although these songs didn't grab me straight away, it's still full of garbled country melodies and hilarious quips. Well worth the investment in the long run.

Tanglewood Numbers, Berman's latest release is sunnier in tempremant. There's even some hope that the album will sell well. Songs like Punks in the Bearlight, I'm Getting Back Into You and How Can I Love You When You Won't Lie Down are immediately charming. Sleeping is the Only Love delivers some trademark hilarity, but the songs are wrapped up a little warmer: "Later I come to find, life is sweeter than Jewish wine". This might be the best place to start.