Silver Jews: Classic or dud

I say classic, all the way, but i didn't buy his last album. Was it good?

'in 1984 i was hospitalized for approaching perfection /
slowly screwing my way across europe, they had to make a correction

1.American Water
2. Natural Bridge
3.Bright Flight
4. Starlite Walker

According to gygax, it is still coming out. I hope so, because I Ebayed my copy of The Arizona Record when I was broke and hungry and now I miss it. :(

when smog was on tour last year, i asked dan k. about it and he said it was coming out. as expose sang many moons ago: "seasons change, people change..."

I have Bright Flight and American Water, but they have never been favourites. I shall dig them out from where they are stored.

Still, Starlite Walker is great. If they played here, I would go and see them, and as a rule I don't really go to concerts much these days.

I think I like the song about being ill/throwing up that is on the Hey! Drag City comp (I could be wrong about the subject)

I never really got into Smog, Ex-con is the only song I like by them...it's the "casing the joint" line.

The "send in the clouds" b-side "Self-Ignition" is classic

From Pfork Berman interview:

Sometimes I notice that people nowadays seem to build their own context, whatever they want it to be. I see someone like Devendra Banhart, and to me it's fascinating that he's able to create a context in which the scene in Animal House where the folk singer's bashed over the head with a guitar never happened. In his context, not all of America saw that movie, laughed, and agreed that folk music was annoying. And I never thought that I'd live inside a context like that. But I do, so I decided to make my own ones up too.

Thoughts on new album?

I like 3 or 4 songs a lot.

The songs i'm digging are: What is Not But Could Be If, My Pillow is the Threshold and Open Field.

I need to give more listeningz tho.

It's outstanding, maybe album of the year. "Open Field" (A Maher Halal Hash Baz cover, I think), "Candy Jail," "Suffering Jukebox" and "Party Barge" are all genius.

Oh yeah Suffering Jukebox the wifey sings the chorus? That's a great one too.

Wait...there's a new album? When is it coming out, what's it called? Shit, how did this pass me by?

yah mee too im psyched dling now!

l loved tanglewood numbers - so by far their best

I like it.

any sm involvement? american water's by far the bossest

Really not feeling this much beyond "Suffering Jukebox", "My Pillow is the Threshold", and "San Francisco B.C.".

don't think there's any Malkmus on the new one. Smog is a decent comparison--I really only like one Smog song, "Cold Blooded Old Times," and has Berman ever come up with anything like that?

"random rules," "the wild kindness," and "buckingham rabbit" i like better than anything i've heard from smog. smog has always struck me as a little, um, smug. berman's not humble by any stretch, but there's way less standoffishness, and his best lyrics affect like nobody's business

Why must it be a competition?

Anyway, jon / via - crazy! Give it a few more spins. I didn't like Tanglewood Numbers much on first listen, but after absorbing it, it became one of my favorite albums of the year. This one is also a grower. And lyrics? Come on, dude:

"Living in a candy jail
With peppermint bars
Peanut brittle bunk beds
and marshmallow walls...
the warden keeps the data on your favorite brands..."

I need to catch up on the joos .... I was big into them around the time of Starlite Walker / American Water but I've only heard a couple tracks since then ("Punks in the Beerlight" off Tanglewood Numbers is pretty classic)

reading back on the thread I'm surprised there's only scattered mention of "Advice to the Graduate," that was by far the "hit" as far as my friends were concerned. awesome lyrics.

"sleep on your back, and ash in your shoe, and always use the old sense of the words ... "

Oh shit, I love me some Silver Jews. Gotta get on this.

I think it's one of his better albums.

I miss the old sloppy, gritty Joos. Not that I was expecting that with this new one, but the slicked up stuff can't help but make me think back fondly of the older albums. I end up thinking the same thing with each new Will Oldham and Smog album too. It loses some of its charm all cleaned up.

Anyway, I like what I hear so far OK. These things take some time to digest.

Boy wants a car from his Dad
Dad says, first you gotta cut that hair
Boy says, hey Dad Jesus had long hair
and Dad says
that's right son, but Jesus walked everywhere

When I was younger I was a cobra
in every case I wanted to be cool
Now that I'm older and sub-space is colder
I just want to say something true

(co-wrote at least one song, too)

Pavement Jews ftw

i'm sorry, i have my history wrong, obviously, and my memory has failed me.

i thought they made American Water, then DCB got frustrated w/ the "side talk" stuff and he went and made Natural Bridge w/ other people, and then on from there. i had those two in the wrong order, and i did *not* realize Bob and SM were on Tanglewood Numbers.

my apologies! i believe myself to be a big fan of all involved but blew it here! :) (i'm getting old.)

You are forgiven!!

:)

I think it's important to remember that Pavement is a Silver Jews spin-off band.

isn't it more accurate to say they're both Ectoslavia spinoff bands?

and yet maybe pavement was a sin-off band of the silver jews who were a spin-off band of Ectoslavia who were a spinoff band of Bag O' Bones.

v. obscure trivia but Spiral was using the name Pavement for a band when he was living in Tempe AZ with 3 other randos, a couple years before Slay Tracks.

so even Pavement is a Pavement-spinoff.

Hi SS!

-SS

Steve Shasta = Spiral

that's my theory

It’s too bad that War Comet never moved beyond the loosely conceptual stage.

Haha shut my mouth https://archive.org/details/warcomet19931110

Hey, that's cool, thx (these are Silver Jews songs, tho... so it's basically the Joos with West swapped in for Bob?)

West was a member of the Jews around that time, from the Starlite Walker reissue liners:

"Starlite Walker was an Oxford, Mississippi record. David resided on the outskirts of town at the time. He was renting a tiny building that was part of a professor's chemistry lab in the woods. He paid $100 a month. It was mildly suspicious. Stephen and I went there to rehearse for about five days. Oxford is a beautiful town. There are lots of beautiful people. We were well. Peaking physically. We built songs around David's words. David had just about all of his lyrics written down in a notebook. When we were 70% ready, we headed up to Easley Studios in Memphis (which burned to the ground a few years ago). Doug and Davis were ready for us. They were cool and it was welcoming. Steve West joined us on the songs that we needed a 'real' drummer. I just wasn't good enough. It didn't bother me. I was proud of my drums on "Trains Across The Sea" and my moog on "New Orleans." We didn't have any significant problems recording and it turned out well. Our host Sherman Willmott (we stayed above his record shop in a small apartment) did a marvelous job of keeping barbecue sauce on our faces the whole time. I gained six pounds. Upon completing Starlite Walker, Silver Jews felt like a band instead of a project. We became formidable.

Bob Nastanovich
2/7/11
Des Moines, Iowa

I've never liked "The Walnut Falcon" too much... :/

SS! Missed you! <3 SS

My favourite SJ song is Suffering Jukebox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT_YIk-a8jU

Can anyone ID the final song in that War Comet set? I’ve never heard it before.

sounds like an improvised jam.

src: someone who listened to a lot of pavement improvised jams around that time.

was watching this old Harmony Korine/Gaspar Noe documentary and caught off guard by the Berman cameo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYiN2um9-Zs

Bless you, WBF, but you just posted a YouTube video that's 52 minutes long.

I'm going to take your word on the cameo.

It's in the first few minutes, although he kind of looks like an alternate universe David Berman.

9:00

Bob Nastanovich is with David there but doesn't get the call out.

haha - I didn't even catch Bob there!