[ad_1]
In 2008, David Berman left the music because he was not a career player; because he feared to start sucking; because, as he put it in an essay titled "My Father, My Dog's Attack," his work as a songwriter could never make up for the damage done to the world by his famous lobbyist father of business, Richard Berman, called "Dr. Wrong. When HBO approached him during the break to participate in a docusory about his father, Berman backtracked, fearing that it would be a portrait in the manner of Tony Soprano. But among all the reasons invoked by David Berman for abandoning his project of recording, Silver Jewels, the most pressing was also the simplest: he wanted more time for reading.
Thus, Berman spent forty years in Nashville, surrounded by books – an experience he recently described as "a kind of dream of my childhood." This is an easy image for anyone who is familiar with his corpus, an islander, a universe that covers six extraordinary studio albums, a collection of poems, a cartoons, a documentary, some EP and a compilation. Throughout this time, Berman has maintained the role of the quiet outside, proudly allergic to trends and devoted with academic intensity to something rare, even within the individualist community of independent rock lo-fi: religion, country music , sobriety, example of deep attribution. meaning for every word that he sang and every interview he gave.
On 2008 Belvedere Mountain, Belvedere Sea, the last Silver Jewels album, Berman reduced his control of the language supported by the MFA for simple allegorical writing. Throughout the disc, his mood seemed light, as he sang words of love and perseverance, accompanied by his wife Cbadie, bbadist and singer of his ever-changing band (which included, at various times, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, Will Oldham and William Tyler).
After ending an almost fatal addiction and devoting himself to Judaism, Berman seemed to be well placed at the time. And although he has always been a man of fabrication – he has given several contradictory explanations on behalf of the group "Silver Jews" over the years, he has never been one to pure obfuscation. It was easy to believe him when he said that he was done with the music. He had some appearances after his early retirement; You can find YouTube videos of him, sleek and sweet, at a poetry reading and a projection of Harmony Korine. But there was also a lot of calm. You never really imagined a return of money for Jews, even after rumors began to show of band practices and new songs with titles such as "Wacky Package Eyes". "I only want to die in your eyes." And he did it.
In the manner of Berman, he took over a guitar after the death of his mother. "I think it was like a meditation, but it was also like a mbadage," he said about this familiar exercise, the wooden body vibrating against his chest. His strumming eventually degenerated into "I Loved Being My Mother's Son," one of the highlights of his new album back under the name of Purple Mountains. Lyrically in mourning but musically at peace, he sets the tone for the record as a whole. These are tarnished songs of heartache, sorrow and bitterness. A ballad, "Nights that will not happen" can be heard as a pros and cons list of life. Supported by members of Brooklyn's folk-folk Woods group, however, Berman's writing has never been so demanding and direct. These songs provide a solid introduction to all the beautiful contradictions that have always made his work so comforting and complex – a rare feat for a return album.
Berman's lyrics reveal all the reading that inspired him, as warm and immediate as the sound may sound: harmonica of the heart of the country, canteen horns and steel pedal. The chorus of "Margaritas at the Mall", which is a song, alludes to a philosophical text on the capitalist origins of purgatory; A line on the treatment of the world as a "roadside inn" in "Nights that will not happen" echoes a teaching of the second century Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. And the legendary "Storyline Fever" continues its tradition of penultimate fanciful tracks by considering the duration of life as a long story offering an infinite number of possible results: it looks a lot like an anxiety attack but sounds a little bit like the way of Kinks. The fact that Berman exchanged texts from a university program for their most humane uses testifies to the tragic and persistent empathy of his writings. Few writers are so willing to submit to their lowest depths to make you feel less alone.
While Violet mountains It's remarkable to say what we missed in Berman's writing, it's just as important for what we miss. He avoids faith crises in both "What I feel" and "Margaritas at the Mall," a song that finds him exhausted by seeking answers to "such a subtle god." His separation from Cbadie after two decades of marriage cast a heavy shadow on almost every song, a musical and thematic absence that gives the album a disturbing aspect. His voice has never been stronger, but his delivery is powerless. "That's all I wanted, it's the end of all desires," he sings weakly in opening. "If no one likes me, then maybe no one likes me," he grumbled in the end. These are the types of characters he had once observed with a conscious distance; nowadays, he just looks exhausted.
The subject of Violet mountains is dark, but he is still David Berman, and he can still dazzle with the beauty of his writing or wink at the camera to lighten the atmosphere when necessary. When he arrived in the 1990s, he called himself a lazy, suggesting that his unpolished birth was either an affect or an ethos. Over time, he insisted on the opposite: that it was the effort that mattered; that even if you could not keep a note, it was worth showing the effort; that a song is something that you spend all your life learning to sing properly.
Source link
