The Silver Jews Issue #36

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City)

By Anna Breshears
Published: August 1st, 2008 | 11:07am

The Silver Jews are a band for which the adjective “legendary” is an assumed but invisible prefix. Jews’ front man, only constant member (it has included thirty over the course of an almost 20-year history), and creative soul David Berman, has cataloged his frustration, depression, and occasional happiness over the years in songs strewn with truths masquerading as sardonic non-sequiturs set to country-rock twang.

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is a different animal than previous Silver Jews efforts in many ways: The recording features the same musicians who toured for 2005’s Tanglewood Numbers rather than the typical revolving cast. It's Berman’s least self-conscious effort to date, a product, surely, of his newfound comfort with touring — and finally, it’s not bleak as shit. Sure, there are sad and doubtful moments, but the album ends with Dave and Cassie (Berman’s wife, muse, and bass player) singing rather sweetly in unison on “We Could Be Looking For the Same Thing” like a modern-day June and Johnny.

Berman’s droll, deadpan, and shrewd witticisms are as twisted as ever. No one else can throw off phrases like “Tennessee tendencies and chemical dependencies” and get away with it. The more narrative songs stand out here: Berman’s honky-tonk tragicomedy “San Francisco, BC” — a B-movie story of love gone wrong, burglary, and accidental murder — features some of the record’s snarkiest lines, “We had sarcastic hair / We used pseudonyms / We got a lot of stares on the street back then.” The pious, organ intro on “Suffering Jukebox” leads seamlessly into smooth and expansive gee-tar (via Peyton Pinkerton and William Tyler) with Cassie on the chorus: “Suffering jukebox / In a happy town / You’re over in the corner breaking down."

On Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, Berman sounds more comfortable performing than ever before; in “My Pillow Is the Threshold,” amidst vague religious imagery, he declares “I’m here for good / I won’t leave you anymore.” He could be talking to Cassie, his bandmates or the audience — any which way, if the result is more albums as good as this one, amen. — Anna Breshears