David Berman said, after passing through the crowd to get to the stage, that Maxwell’s is the only place he requested to play at on the whole Silver Jews tour. The tiny, 300-person venue in Hoboken has a lot of history, and one of the best sound systems around. It’s also the perfect place to see a band you really love because the stage is small and low to the ground. Everything is very personal in a room that size. It seemed to fit Berman well—his austere and slightly hunched over body roaming the small stage like a panther. The Silver Jews started out in the 1990s, and had never toured until recently. It was clear from the die-hards in the crowd that this was a very welcomed performance. (I was standing next to one guy who said he’d gone to the previous 2 performances as well. And he was making notes in a tiny Moleskin journal, too.)
Berman’s voice, if you can imagine for a moment, sounds something like a mix between a stern lecture from a respected professor and a bedtime story told by a beloved uncle. In other words, it’s both pleasant and jarring. Oratorical and operatic. He talks rather than sings a lot of the time, though the sounds he emits are melodic. Only his deep, baritone voice can deliver lyrics like, “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.”
The band, circled around Berman and with two guitarists battling it out for the best riffs, played many songs off the Silver Jews’ new album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. A few classics were thrown in, including the song from which the above lyrics were taken, “Random Rules.”
Berman is one of the most interesting performers I’ve seen. And his appearance cannot be overlooked—he was wearing his own band’s shirt (a member of my party was offended, I thought it was probably the only clean shirt around), plastic yellow sunglasses and had two black Sharpies in his pocket.
It was refreshing to see a band that isn’t obsessed with image. Berman is not a stud. He’s a person with a penchant for quirky lyrics and storytelling. In a song from the new album, “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat,” he sings: “What’s with all the handsome grandsons in these rock band magazines? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald and the goateed?”
Berman was said to have attempted suicide some years ago and has had trouble with drugs. But watching him last night, all that couldn’t seem farther away. His wife Cassie plays a powerful bass and sings backup on songs, most notably “Suffering Jukebox” from the new album. The lively onstage relations between the husband and wife—he would lovingly-stare as she played and would often stand behind her—made their love palpable.
The band played for well over an hour and the energy never dropped.
Opening for the Silver Jews was Chris Brokaw a performer who also got his start in the ’90s indie scene. Brokaw played solo guitar with his signature tambourine attached to his foot for percussive accompaniment. Brokaw is a skilled guitar player, and I don’t think he hears songs and melody as much as he hears sound. Everything he plays is a sort of challenge to the ear.
Even Berman acknowledged the high-caliber of Brokaw. During the Silver Jews set he said he was happy to play with him and if he had known Brokaw was available he would have brought him along for the whole tour.
