Silver Jews vs. The World
Literally sitting on the edge of his seat backstage at Glasgow’s ABC, an animated David Berman rails against current trends in popular music. The reflective coordinator behind the countrified, lo-fi indie rock of the Silver Jews tells Paul Mitchell why we've become too complacent to rage against the machine
Amiable though his company is, one can’t help but get the impression
that Silver Jews’ songwriter David Berman has obsessive tendencies when
it comes to his music. This probably won’t come as a surprise to fans
of his work, which, over the course of almost twenty years, has offered
revealing and sophisticated insight into the human condition.
Yet, surprisingly for such a veteran, Berman has only recently begun
playing regular live shows. “I made myself do something I was not sure
of, this involved making a total commitment,” he relates. “The whole
process is quite uncomfortable for me, I don’t like waiting around or
being cramped in a van. However, I like being on stage. To really
understand the Silver Jews, it has to be about more than purely the
music. The concept also matters. Going on tour, and seeing who was
listening – because before I didn’t have a picture - has changed
everything about the way I approach writing.”
Berman has just written his sixth album and, having been a part of the
industry since the late '80s, feels more than qualified to comment on
what he feels is the current state of play: “I feel it’s part and
parcel of the culture at large which wants to avoid reflection, wants
to avoid asking questions, wants to avoid destabilising,” he explains. “What we get is a lot of people writing about pointlessness and
misery.”
But hasn’t it always been like this? “To call life hopeless and ‘sucky’
is the default position of today’s songwriter. It’s a way of
songwriting where nobody needs to reflect on what’s being said because
casual pessimism seems to be the lingua franca of our time. It’s very
easy to be considered a serious songwriter and not do any serious
discovery.”
It becomes apparent that this is a man who has pondered the very nature
of existence relentlessly. Realising there are no facile solutions, he
refers to a line on his current album which suggests that life itself
is filled with numerous small victories and defeats. “The narratives
are clearer in these songs, and they’re pedagogical in the sense that
there’s a lot of experience being related. I’ve tried to imbue the
writing with a series of epigrammatic wisdom and given myself a mandate
for the music to be more meaningful. For example, the era we are in
right now chooses Radiohead as the iconic band of the generation. When
I talk about songwriting, a good piece of evidence for the lack of it
would be the fact that bands like Radiohead remind me, say, of Emerson
Lake and Palmer, where other people can’t play the songs; they’re not
really about anything, they’re massive and designed to be dominating
physical experiences.”
“Writing in cliché prevents reflection, clichéd art doesn’t say
anything. Right now, individuals are caught up in a huge narcissistic
whirlwind, where everybody seems to be the star of their own life;
society and media encourage that, and this is reflected in the music.
Music which makes you reflect is inherently different to the type of
music you could use as a soundtrack to your life and which doesn’t ask
you to change, reflect or ask where all this is headed. There is no
long term planning anymore, no more raging against the machine; people
are living in the eternal present.”
If this all seems hopelessly downcast, Berman feels his current album
offers a note of optimism for the current generation. “As far as my own
life is concerned, I seemed to have been asleep for ten years. When I
woke up I saw this generation of very sweet kids born after 1980 that
are very different from people of my age. Those kids have been given a
raw deal by the worst adults ever. They’re not feeling angry about it
yet because there hasn’t been a collapse, and I feel that maybe I’m
just cynical enough to be able to report that the people older than me
are fucking it up with no long term planning. They are not doing what
the old people did when they themselves were young, in providing for
the next generation. They’re blowing the wad, using it all up and
they’re careless. So, the album title has vivacious overtones, in that
it’s worth taking on the world, but it also sounds a note of warning.
Look out and see what’s going on.”
Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is released via Drag City on 9 Jun
http://www.silverjews.net