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

Feature by Paul Mitchell | 27 May 2008

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

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