Arrrrrgh!
This is why I hate trying to work for the Echo. They fuck my lede, and cut chunks out of a story that was dead-on wordcount. Why would a history of recording on walkmen and answering machines (history from about eight years ago) make "one" wonder how Berman would recount his life? That doesn't make any fucking sense. And why cut the origin of the name? The phrasing is broken up to seem more retarded, subordinate clauses have their dominant clauses lopped off. Christ, I need to stab these motherfuckers.

The story, as submitted, follows:


Telling the story of the Silver Jews makes you wonder how David Berman, the main actor behind the Silver Jews, feels about hearing it again.
Usually, the narrative goes something like this: Berman, Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich knew each other from school at the University of Virginia. They moved to New York, Malkmus and Berman got jobs as art museum guards, and they started performing noisy, improvised songs (often recording them by playing for people’s answering machines). They named themselves the Silver Jews as an homage to the Silver Apples, the Silver Beatles and the slang term for blonde jews.
Occassionally, the notion that the Silver Jews is/was a Pavement side project surfaced (as Malkmus fronted Pavement, and Nastanovich drummed for both bands, as did Steve West), especially as Pavement blew up. On the one hand, this led to many people picking up Jews albums who might not have otherwise. On the other hand, it’s always been Berman’s baby. Luckily, Berman was no Gore Vidal to begrudge success.

That success helped attract Drag City records, whose founder met Berman at a Pavement show. A few ultra lo-fi releases followed, recorded on a walkman. Berman got accepted in a graduate writing program at the University of Massachusetts and had that rare thing among grad students— plenty of time to write both poetry and new songs. He also found musical compatriots in members of the Scud Mountain Boys and New Radiant Storm King, giving the resultant album a country-rock hybrid flavor.

Flash forward a couple of years, past a few great American records on Drag City, a courtship and marriage to Cassie Berman, an acclaimed collection of poetry titled “Actual Air,” and a stint rehab emerging into the land of “club soda unbridled.”

Berman describes his new album Tanglewood Numbers, in an email interview, as “assertive.” It is, and it’s also his most relaxed and even cheerful album. The humor that Berman has always brought to his tales of wayward characters is still there, but there’s both more sympathy for people trapped in ugly situations and less irony in his gaze.

With more keyboards and a fuller, warmer sound, the album feels more through composed but, says Berman, “I also wanted it to have the natural havoc that comes with the quickly assembled, even if it took six months to find it.”

There’s plenty of blunt autobiography as well, such as the third track, “K-Hole.” With more than a little press focusing on his recovery from addiction, including a frighteningly open article in Fader, Berman’s songs about substance abuse play against what has been written about his life.
“I think the record is just me adding to the information, grafting my representation of my experience onto anyone who chooses to remember it, and file it away with the other convincing data that your mind might call up to sift thru base a personal decision on,” says Berman, describing his choice to deal with the subject matter on the album.

This isn’t a depressing addiction album. “K-Hole” is followed by a cheerful “Animal Shapes,” a jaunty duet with his wife about God and clouds. And there’s far less straight alt-country than on previous albums, with the effect of the album feeling more balanced and more mature.
“Because they are separated from each other by three or four years, I look back at them as soil samples taken from the planets in the solar system of my life,” says Berman. “’Tanglewood Numbers’ is my Jupiter. What's Sufjan Stevens up to now? His second state? I'm going to start working on my Saturn later this year. Followed by the disappointing double live album Uranus.”

With titles like “Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed,” and a well-known penchant for taking the piss to press in interviews, Berman’s description of his touring band’s sound promises a lively evening.

“The set won't even be half from the new album since we've never played the old stuff.
I think the band will sound like a barber on keys, a Polish-American stoner on drums, two sons of the nineteenth century on duel lead guitars, and a female cyborg in every bunk bed after the show,” says Berman.