|
July.08 Cover - Silver Jews |
|
Written by Steve Dollar
|
 The Jewish Attitude
David Berman Changes His Opinion, and Changes His Life
There are no simple conversations with David Berman. The singer-songwriter, whom indie-rock historians always will remember as the founding member of Silver Jews who didn’t go on to form 1990s hipster faves Pavement, has an acutely analytical mind that can find multiple layers of meaning in everything.
Chatting over bistro fare in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood during a recent visit to New York, the 41-year-old performer discusses, among other things, the gentrification of matzah ball soup, why anti-depressants saved his life, how he has profited from his embrace of Judaism, and the most awful food his mother ever prepared.
“My mom would get ground beef at a grocery store, roll it up into balls, and put the raw balls in the freezer,” Berman says. Then, once the snacks were properly frozen, they would be served. “With a big puddle of ketchup and slices of white onion. And we’d sit there and eat raw hamburger meat.”
Sometimes, the music Berman has made since starting the Silver Jews in 1989 – six albums, plus multiple EPs and singles – has seemed as uncooked and disconsolate. But the new Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City) reflects a different attitude. “You might look at this album and say there’s no real self-pity going on,” Berman says. Rail-thin and rocking a beard that is nearly Rabbinical, he was sharing a table with his wife and bass player, Cassie Berman, following a video shoot in Prospect Park, something the once-reclusive performer might never have done a few years ago. “The difference is if there’s suffering in the songs it isn’t the narrator suffering in a context that you’re being asked to identify with. A lot of them are more persona songs, and that keeps them from being gloomy.”
|
|
Read more...
|
|
