Six Definitive Songs: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Silver Jews
Silver Jews are one of the finest indie bands of all time, and the late great David Berman is arguably the premiere songwriter to emerge from the 1990s. There we go; I said it. Someone had to. Sober solemnity and self-appreciation are factors that all too often affect our judgement when it comes to the acts we choose to laud as legends, but this is a status that Silver Jews never seemed to care for. For them, solemnity was always best skewered with a laissez-faire laugh, and self-appreciation was reserved for the one pasta sauce a month that you inexplicably nail after a string of sorry failures.
Helmed by Berman, he welcomed his Pavement buddies Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich into the band to get things moving. Outside of their jams, Berman worked as a security guard at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he foiled master criminal’s attempts to infiltrate it, primarily by scribbling his passing lyrical thoughts down on a notepad and marvelling at the contents of the mausoleum. This proximity to conceptual art underpinned the sound of their early scratchy demo-like tracks.
However, in time, the conceptual element of the music would make way for something more melodious that matched the meter of Berman’s musing poetry. And it really was poetry—for every individualist line that misses the mark in a comically notable fashion, there are nuggets of wit more wondrous than Whitman and bracing enough personality to feature on a prime Steve Martin album.
Below we’ve chartered the rise of this great band and offered new fans and old alike the chance to purvey the brilliance of the Silver Jews from the start. They aren’t the easiest band to get going with—not everyone will like them. In fact, nobody just ‘likes’; you either love them or you’ve never heard of them, and maybe they just haven’t fully clicked yet for a few folks. Thus, it’s not easy to narrow them down to six tracks, but if this introductory guide welcomes just one new fan into the outsider world of Silver Jews, then my time has been well spent.
Silver Jews’ six definitive songs:
‘Trains Across the Sea’
When news of Berman’s suicide broke in 2019, his friend and fellow songwriting virtuoso, Bill Callahan, wrote: “The world is and always will be a David Berman lyric.” If that is the case, please let it be the lyric about the stars being the headlights of angels on their way to save us. Because, in truth, that’s the brilliance of Berman—his vulnerability scythed through art with such comforting humanity that amid all the sardonic remarks and sideways glances, there are sentiments of spiritual wonder that would’ve made him blush to utter straight-faced.
The song ‘Trains Across the Sea’ is from Silver Jews’ 1994 debut record Starlite Walker. As the second track on the album, it wonderfully announces the mix of wry wit and cutting wisdom that would blossom throughout the rest of their back catalogue, as Berman croons: “Half hours on Earth, what are they worth? I don’t know / In 27 years, I’ve drunk 50,000 beers / And they just wash against me, like the sea into a pier.” With gems like that in this anthem, it’s no surprise that Callahan chose to cover this song in honour of his dearly departed friend. Surely that is one of the finest lyrics that have ever been paired with such a flowing melody.
‘Random Rules’
America Writer, the band’s third album from 1998, was the moment many first took note of Silver Jews. The outfit seemed more assured in their work, with memoir-like tales in the mix and a touch more structure to the songs. ‘Random Rules’ is the epitome of this. Beginning with a classic Berman opening line, the anthem rumbles through to tan lines on ring fingers and flurries of filigreed guitar work, amounting to something close to a defining anthem for the band and all the sincerity that comes with self-encapsulation.
In an era pervaded by grunge, Silver Jews refused to succumb to fads and remained wandering along, clasping the hand of their muse. Sure, there’s a scratchiness to the sound, but there’s none of the relishing in pain or purposeful dissonance. There is, in short, a sense we’re all resigned to hardships but an overriding sense of finding the beauty in things. ‘Random Rules’ is another opus wrought with mature life experience. Like all the best Silver Jews tracks, it feels lived in.
‘I’m Gonna Love the Hell Out of You’
There is a beautiful drunkenness to a lot of Silver Jews tunes. Their music has that slight hungover feel of being beyond the world. If you will, a liberated ‘fuck-it-ness’, excuse the French. And it’s in full force in the Swedish bookstore tale of ‘I’m Gonna Love the Hell Out of You’.
Once more, this is a narrative tale with enough flourishes to feel like it actually happened, if not to Berman, then at least to someone out there amid the wild roses. Stumbling on the broken heel of a wandering riff, the steady bassline is a rhythmic handrail that keeps things in line, making it home with ease.
‘Punks in the Beerlight’
Let’s not forget the music here too. While Berman’s lyrics rightfully take centre stage (as this piece has continually banged on about), he was also capable of getting his cronies to bend a riffing crescendo that kicks like a mule readying itself for the pastoral division title in the UFC. This is as close as the band gets to a full-on, cutting-loose frenzy.
Bristling with energy, this is indicative of the way the band saw music as an avenue to salvation. It’s impossible to get to the guitar-duelling finale of this punky anthem and be buoyed with a chant of “I love you to the max,” without feeling a frisson of joy. Now with Cassie Berman in the mix, there is more of a unified feel and marital boon to the bliss-filled songs.
‘San Francisco B.C.’
This loquacious comedy of new wave haircuts and lovers losing sight of the “things we quote ‘believe’” is a Bonnie & Clyde reworking in miniature. Brimming with details and superb rhyming couplets like the unfurling punchlines to this verse: “Gene took off his hat and I noticed his hair / It was neatly trimmed, but a patch was bare / I knew it wasn’t new wave, it was human error,” it’s an epic exposé of acerbic wit riding the whims of a truly rhythmic song.
In a tale where the “cops couldn’t catch a bus” and kids sport “sarcastic haircuts”, there is an odd sense of heart and sincerity. Like the Coen brothers, the absurdity of this odious folly seems to be reflective of the wider human comedy that continually perpetuates itself via the unspooling trickle of minor tragedies. This is the story of fools ordaining their own unfortunate ends, as has always been the case in San Francisco and every metropolis since B.C. and possibly before.
‘We Could Be Looking for the Same Thing’
It’s the second song from Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, and while ‘How to Rent a Room’ and ‘Pretty Eyes’ might be owed an apology, I make no excuse for doubling up on the masterpiece. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is somehow simultaneously gruff and melodious like the sound of sandpaper on silk, and the poetry that props it all up whisks you towards a sense of earthly wonder in the wink of an eye. From start to finish, Berman crafts perfectly realised boons that transfigure a reality perfectly realised with a windfall of lilting musical laments and love letters.
Perhaps as close to pop as they ever came, the last song Silver Jews offered may be the best place to start with them. The song’s message is elevated to no end by the fact that it is sung in duet form, proving that they always knew how to make the music match the poetry in an illuminating way. And the music this time out is a thing of genuine prettiness. That’s a humble artistic virtue that has often been underrated.
