David Berman Playlist

In our March issue we included a selection of the late David Berman’s poetry as a Dog-Eared Page. I’ve long admired Berman as a poet, but it was his music that first drew me in. Shortly after hearing some acquaintances cover his “Black and Brown Blues” in high school, I picked up two CDs by his band Silver Jews: The Natural Bridge and American Water. I bought them while on a field trip to New York City—you couldn’t find CDs like that in the rural area where I grew up—and I’ve been a fan ever since. If you enjoyed his poetry and would like a primer on his songs, below is a David Berman playlist with some of my favorites—hopefully as good a place to start as any.

—Derek Askey, Senior Editor

Silver Jews—“Black and Brown Blues” (1996)
Duty dictates that I include the first song of Berman’s that I ever heard, but, in truth, I would’ve included this if it were the hundredth. A somewhat embarrassing admission: Inspired by the line—“When I go downtown / I always wear a corduroy suit / ’cause it’s made of a hundred gutters / that the rain can run right through”—I routinely wore a corduroy blazer in high school, which, as you can probably imagine, didn’t earn me many compliments.

Silver Jews—“Inside the Golden Days of Missing You” (1996)
There’s a certain type of Silver Jews fan for whom The Natural Bridge is the go-to record by the band, and I am one such fan. While some of its material can be solemn or even plodding, “Inside the Golden Days of Missing You” has always felt like sunshine to me.

Silver Jews—“Random Rules” (1998)
When people talk about their favorite Berman lines, the opening of “Random Rules” is almost always included: “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.” I love it as much as the next listener, but, really, I love everything about this song: Berman’s warm baritone, the parade of memorable couplets, Chris Stroffolino’s ebullient trumpet playing.

Silver Jews—“Bar Scene from Star Wars” (1993)
Including an instrumental song in a list of material from such a talented lyricist might seem like a daft choice, but there’s something mysterious and lived-in-feeling here. It’s so charmingly lo-fi that I find myself encouraging people to track down a copy of the band’s ultra-hard-to-find Arizona Record just to have it.

Silver Jews—“Blue Arrangements” (1998)
It’s easy to think of Berman as a singular voice, but he’s a great collaborator too. “Blue Arrangements” heavily features bandmate Stephen Malkmus on vocals and guitar. (The lyrics, however, are unmistakably Berman: “When something breaks it makes a beautiful sound.”) As a side note, I recommend picking up a physical copy of this album rather than streaming it; otherwise you miss out on Berman’s captioned drawings in the liner notes.

Silver Jews—“Tennessee” (2001)
I remember Bright Flight being the record where the band’s popularity began to blossom, although maybe it was merely when a few of my friends started listening to them too. In any case, the album was a departure for Berman, the music more firmly in country-and-western mode, but still with his trademark wit and observation. Although there isn’t a bad track here, I’ve always favored “Tennessee” for its quiet longing—and for Berman’s wife Cassie’s wonderful vocals.

Silver Jews—“There Is a Place” (2005)
Pick a different day and I might choose a line from Bob Dylan as my favorite lyric ever, but today that title is going to Berman’s “I saw God’s shadow on this world.” Not as stylistically cohesive as their previous album, Tanglewood Numbers is a dark, varied, and at times challenging tour de force, and the closing song, “There Is a Place,” is an energetic, cathartic achievement—miles from his wordier early work, but no less affecting.

Silver Jews—“Strange Victory, Strange Defeat” (2008)
Another wonderful example of what Cassie brought to the band with her vocals. (She’s also a hell of a bass player.) Plus, the song finds Berman at his funniest and most trenchant. This was the final Silver Jews album, and although we’d hear more from Berman roughly a decade later, it was such a strong send-off that I almost didn’t lament his calling it quits. Almost.

Purple Mountains—“Storyline Fever” (2019)
I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from Berman again when this came out, and so it was a pleasure to hear Purple Mountains’ self-titled (and, sadly, only) album. And what a relief that all the things I loved about his work are served up in spades here, perhaps most notably on “Storyline Fever.” Make no mistake: Purple Mountains is a dark album, but it’s also very funny, and shot through with terrific turns of phrase: “Turn your pedestal into a carving board / if that’s what the audience is starving for.”

Silver Jews—“Trains Across the Sea” (1994)
It doesn’t feel right to end on such a down note—Berman’s work has uplifted me far more than it’s ever made me feel low—and “Trains Across the Sea” is one of those songs of his that just begs me to get out of my chair, out of my head, and into the world. “In twenty-seven years,” he sings, “I’ve drunk fifty thousand beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier.” Just a year later he wrote the marvelous “Self-Portrait at 28,” one of the finest poems in his enviable body of work: also featured in Actual Air, from which the Dog-Eared Page selections were taken.