Silver Jews “Tanglewood Numbers” Drag City
Records
After a bout with depression and a suicide attempt, David Berman
is back with the Silver Jews’ fifth full-length album,
“Tanglewood Numbers,” and this time he won’t take
backstage as a Pavement-goes-Nashville act.
Featuring former Pavement front man Stephen Malkmus on guitar,
Berman runs the vocals with his trademark Johnny Cash timbre. His
signature sing-speaking monotone underplays the lively, more
rollicking instrumentation, revealing a sarcastic, self-deprecating
mood that contributes to the album’s darker tones.
The opening track is unconventionally startling, considering the
rest of “Tanglewood.” While lyrically playful and
pleading all at once (“Punks in the beerlight, two burnouts
in love/I always loved you to the max”), “Punks in the
Beerlight” is misleading, featuring a reverb guitar tone
evoking a post-punk imitation reminiscent of bands such as
Interpol.
The style steadies over the course of the album, reviving The
Jews’ classic mash-up of stock-country song structure and
lo-fi indie, and keeps the combination charming.
Playful tracks take up most of the album, such as
“Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed” and “Animal
Shapes,” where Berman asks, “Where does an animal sleep
when the ground is wet? … God must be carving the clouds into
animal shapes.” The sunny country ballad “I’m
Getting Back into Getting Back into You” has occasional
chimes of a synthesizer and swooning female vocal harmonies,
followed by the upbeat highlight track, “How Can I Love You
If You Won’t Lie Down,” which features more cutesy,
girl-group vocals.
Lyrically, there’s a lot more to the album than fiddles
and ponies. The closing track, “There Is a Place,”
calls attention to itself as a representative of an inherently
darker album than the Silver Jews have ever released, despite
musical evidence to the contrary. The song crescendos with
Berman’s urgent, anxious voice singing, “I saw the
shadow of this world … there grew a desert in my mind … I took
a hammer to it all.” The words, as is the case for much of
the album, play counterpoint to the music; the track ends with the
guitar calmly strumming stable major chords, a perfect resolution
to Berman’s recent recovery.
Like Berman himself, “Tanglewood Numbers” is at once
a balanced mesh of giggly sweet comedy and dark longing. It’s
laughing and begging to be taken seriously at the same time.
-Taleen Kalenderian