Tanglewood Numbers, the forthcoming new record from my most favorite rock band ever, the Silver Jews, has been leaked onto the internet and is now being discussed, criticized, analyzed, made sense of by my peers. Like them, I too posess an opinion on this new collection of first-rate music songs.
The first four records David Berman made seemed to be rooted in the very precious atmospheres of the world-famous Slacker Nineties that of course Pavement was such a big advocate of and helped to cast the Silver Jews in the image they would come to be known as. But this record, for the first time, is truly different in that the music, the attitude, the approach, everything involved with making the record short of a completely new band is totally different.
There are new dimensions in Berman's singing voice all over this record that started in Bright Flight but just now are becoming truly realized. The first time I heard "Time Will Break The World" on BF I was taken aback at the grizzly, mush-mouthed, physically uncomfortable croak of Berman's on some of the lines in that song (especially "sun-shattered... HAIR") that sounded to me like pretty solid evidence that the song was recorded on the floor of the studio with Berman splayed out, fiending, vomit in his hair, twitching a little maybe. A real wreck. The song was not a hit of sunshine. But of course on side two there was hints of something a bit more uplifting, ie "Let's Not and Say We Did." Basically there started to be more modes of expression than just the same old detatched monotone of all the first couple records. David began to let his freak flag fly a little bit, it seemed.
And then on Tanglewood Numbers it seems like now he's moved from being not ashamed of it to being proud of it and what it represents about himself and all the wastoid garbage he took himself through. It sounds to me like he's gotten out of it and is now on the right "path" (whatever you want to make of that) with priorities besides being an impressive genius who must hold himself back with stunting drug abuse and a continual four-year kegger at the crack house or however he'd best describe it.
And of course there's all the music on the album, too, and what all that sounds like. "K-Hole" sounds like a entirely different band, a modern rock one with outer spacescapes and genuine "bite" (sharp angles where clumsy weathered edges would have appeared in records previous) in the context of the Silver Jews slow country blues history. "Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" is a real honest-to-goodness rave-up that reinforces the long-lost feeling of happiness and excitement with sturdy, simplified bars of banjo and piano accentuated guitar rock. "The Farmer's Hotel" is an Edgar Allan Poe verse about an ominous stay in a ghastly hotel, almost Biblical in its lengthy wisdom. In this standout track, Berman has taken his time to allow the moral to slowly roll down to us at the end of the song, the literate devices used inside exactly as tasteful as we've come to expect from him. There are somber moments on the record but there are flippant ones too. In "Sleeping is the Only Love" Berman tells us a tiny bit about his old friend "Marc with a C" and in "I'm Getting Back (Into Getting Back Into You)" the apologetic husband re-introduces himself this time as coming equipped with a brand new point of view, "like a brown bird nesting in a Texaco sign."
TN is different; what it sounds like to me is Berman no longer hanging his head and feeling sorry for himself. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean before this record I for once certainly didn't think there was anything wrong with it. The previous formula is/was seriously sonic manna to self-defeating indie hipsters who LOVE to wallow in the angst to music that doesn't try as hard as it could.
But listening to this record a few dozen times proves that David has a new perspective on this record. He has wrangled his inner contempt and finally, finally, for the benefit of himself and all his admirers, directed it away from the self and onto external forces, be they political, cultural, whatever. He's standing up for himself. It's all over the lyrics, too:
"We've got no good will, no good will to give
to those who try to take away what we need to live"
"I saw God's shadow on this world
I could not love the world entire
There grew a desert in my mind
I took a hammer to it all"
Some people on some messageboard were comparing the new record to Stephen Malkmus's new record
Face the Truth (yes he really called the record that) and asking which was better. I reasoned that
Face the Truth is alright because it has "Mama" on it and I understand that Stephen Malkmus sort of apologizes in a very covert manner for being such a sarcastic twit for so many years (which is totally hilarious in a I almost feel sorry for the guy kind of way).
But Tangledwood Numerals is a superior recording to me just because I like a Berman more than a Malkmus. Malkmus looks into a lot of mirrors behind of the scenes of Truth, and this time for the purposes of serious self-evaluation and not for admiring his devastatingly handsome facial structure. And that's cool and everything, but I just prefer the way Berman looks at his in the dive bar bathroom after a long night of plugging toxins into his essence, and can't stand himself so much to the point that he has to clench his fist and strike at the mirror with a barn brawl rage, shattering the thing into spiderwebbed cracks ala comb-overed John Malkovich near the end of Being John Malkovich (which was also better than Face the Truth despite "Baby C'mon" being pretty good too).
