Silver Jews-Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea-2008-DV8

Artist: Silver Jews
Title: Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
Label: Drag City
Genre: Alternative
Bitrate: 184kbit av.
Time: 00:33:49
Size: 47.43 mb
Rip Date: 2008-05-31
Str Date: 2008-06-09

1. What Is Not But Could Be If 3:07
2. Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer 1:54
3. Suffering Jukebox 4:21
4. My Pillow Is The Threshold 3:52
5. Strange Victory, Strange Defeat 2:43
6. Open Field 2:39
7. San Francisco B.C. 6:14
8. Candy Jail 2:30
9. Party Barge 2:54
10. We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing 3:35

Release Notes:

Rehab is a bitch. On the disjointed Tanglewood Numbers there’s
an intimate understanding of an addict’s despair (“Let’s not
kid ourselves, it gets really really bad”), an album which
sags under the weight of facing a brave new world for the
first time. Three years later, a presumably healthy David
Berman has entered the honeymoon stage of sobriety, looks back
on his drug and alcohol addiction through rose-tinted
spectacles (‘Candy Jail’), and steps forward even if his legs
are a bit wobbly yet.

‘Suffering Jukebox’ acts as the most obvious metaphor for
Berman’s well-documented personal tribulations. His
matt-finish baritone croons, “While these seconds turn these
minutes into hours of the day”, and with that comes the
acceptance of a man who may not have completely put to rest
the demons of his “chemical dependencies”, but he’s getting
there. He’s resigned himself to the tendencies of those who’ve
given up their bad habits to innocently contemplate the
world’s adulation, or foolishly anticipate society to follow
their inspired lead (“people in this town don’t want to
know”). ‘Party Barge’ doesn’t allow Berman to trip into this
malaise without a sense of humour. Wife Cassie chimes-in for
the “Send us your coordinates / I’ll send a Saint Bernard”
punch-line, a saving grace device which has probably kept the
poor man from going over the edge. Nobody mixes mockery and
mayhem in quite the same way.

Silver Jews’ latest collection of songs is more fully fleshed
out than at any time in D.C. Berman’s storied past. This
unexpected attention for detail has its trade-offs: ‘94’s
Starlite Walker may very well have been the best jam session
of half-formed ideas ever put to tape. In those days,
conventional wisdom was the Joos were little more than an
outlet for the Pavement boys and their agoraphobic college
buddy to mess around in the basement. Today, there’s a good
many people who’d reverse the emphasis. Lookout Mountain,
Lookout Sea swings the pendulum away from the Stephen
Malkmus-infused indie rock of Tanglewood Numbers back to the
alt-country favoured flair of ‘98’s American Water and Bright
Flight of three years later.

If it’s not quite right to say this is a return to form after
one less-than-stellar effort, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is
a lot more fun for hearing Berman returning to his comfort
zone. The pure dynamics of a countrified Silver Jews serves to
put the spotlight on the lyrics, which isn’t a bad thing. His
old friend, Stephen Malkmus, doesn’t appear here and if the
music suffers from being sporadically uninspiring, it’s a
distraction only until Berman delivers his next great line.
Cassie Berman more than ably takes SM’s place for the oddball
harmonies and bass guitar duties. Although she has popped up
on SJ records before, the impression is Mr Berman has been
grooming the missus for this moment, apparently coming to
grips with her shortcomings as a musician. Frankly, I don’t
know what Berman was worried about, as she always sounded
pretty great to me.

The juxtaposition of malaise and jubilance which has been a
hallmark of previous Silver Jews records is leavened here with
wry commentary of his dysfunctional “family shadows”. If his
sentiments oft precariously fall into the throwaway banalities
category it’s Berman’s simple and heartfelt verse - “These
doubles drive these dollars and the light of day away” - that
makes all the difference.

Somewhere in the ‘90s, Berman sequestered himself in
Tennessee, and his themes radiated outward from this
observatory. Here, the songs are standalone vignettes which
step out from the comfortable confines of Nashville and face
the rigors of contemporary American life with an
uncharacteristic wide-eyed enthusiasm, an underlying concept
of triumph beyond tragedy across the entire album.

In much the same way the beauty of Mark Twain novels is the
caustic wit which furrows beneath his Norman Rockwell stories,
Berman’s scrutiny begs but doesn’t necessarily demand the
listener to read between the lines. He is foremost a writer at
heart, but unlike Twain the charm of his affable personality
is that he really doesn’t give a shit. At its core, Silver
Jews is a morality play told by a man who hasn’t been able to
quite live up to common sense standards. Never mind being
caught carrying “burglars’ tools”, he’s getting so close to
redemption he can taste it. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is
the logical next chapter in this manuscript which has had many
of us hooked since the opening lines.