David Berman [pictured] of the Silver Jews isn’t your typical rock star. With the rest of the band assembled onstage, the singer marched through the crowd and up to the stage, clutching a Spider-Man lunchbox in one hand, and plastic grocery bags in the other.
Then, he mounted the stage and began crooning. Berman’s stage presence is deliciously neurotic. He struts and sweats and paces as he sings, projecting a discomfort and disinterest that is almost compelling. Sometimes, he would kneel on the ground and dig through his lunchbox while he sang, projecting a tantalizing lack of awareness of an audience that hung on his every single word.
The Jews’ set was a bit of a strange victory. Berman’s aforementioned antics, along with other deliberate violations of the laws of stage presence - like flopping down on an amp at the back of the stage during instrumental breaks in the songs - veered so far you’re your typical rock star histrionics as to establish an equally attractive anti-magnetism for Berman. He was aided by his band, which seemed completely unfazed by his moody antics, and rocked out with a joyful enthusiasm that elevated Berman’s often wryly clever lyrics to a new plane of enjoyability.
Though generally regarded as an inferior effort in light of his earlier work, the six tracks played from Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea held up remarkably well when mixed in with a smattering of songs from the Jews’ five previous albums.
The show’s highlight came early in the set with the three-song sequence of “Train Across the Sea” from Starlite Walker, “Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer” from LM, LS and “Random Rules” from American Water. The audience sang-along the best they could (given Berman’s sing-speak delivery), delighting in the singer’s baritone mumbling.
But the most transcendent moment of the evening was “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat” off their recent album; it’s a rather pessimistic meditation on the current state of the music industry (that also somehow involves squirrels ruminating on virtue). “What’s with all the handsome grandsons in these rock magazines? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald and the goatee'd?” the forty-one year old Berman moans sadly and joined, ironically, by a room filled with well-dressed college students and assorted hipsters.
The Silver Jews are decidedly non-scene, and yet David Berman, their balding, hirsute, eccentric front man, delivered a profoundly beautiful set of lyrical ruminations that captivated the impressionable crowd of college students.
--Nate Campbell [September 15, 2008]
Photo: Rima Warren
