Silver Jews - American Water
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CD Details
Artist: Silver JewsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1998-10-20
Music Label: Drag City
Soundtracks:
- Random Rules
- Smith & Jones Forever
- Night Society
- Federal Dust
- People
- Blue Arrangements
- We Are Real
- Send in the Clouds
- Like Like the the the Death
- Buckingham Rabbit
- Honk if You're Lonely
- Wild Kindness
Music reviews of American Water
Music Review: Decent Album, Nice Lyrics
Rating: 4 Stars
This is my favorite of album by the Silver Jews, mostly due to the wonderful interplay of Malkmus's distinctive musical style and Berman's wonderfully rich and dense lyrics. I can't wax effulgent, though as this album does have some significant flaws. Mr. Berman sometimes seems to be trying to condense his verbiage for maximum impact, but unintenionally glosses over his lyrical themes with abstract generalities. Not to detract from his skills, of course; He is a fine poet, but his poetic techniques don't always lend themselves to this medium. Aside from the lyrics, I'm at times frustrated by how weakly constructed some of the harmonies are, and bored by some of the quirky genre omage that creeps in from song to song, and takes some songs over entirely.
I would like to respond to the one low rating on this site for this album:
He's not an accomplished vocalist. We know that, everyone knows that, and every time you complain about it, you look like an ignorant jerk in front of everyone. You can't complain about a lack of virtuoso guitar solos in classical music because that's just not where you find high-speed double taps and pick sweeps. Likewise, a lot of indie music's charm is the content's ability to take front stage over the presentation, and the success of front-men who hate the limelight and tell their psychological war stories through their albums is a testament to the potency of this sort of music.
Description of American Water
In the past the Silver Jews were commonly known--and often dismissed--as a Pavement side project. Not anymore. On American Water, D.C. Berman comes into his own as both a poet and a songwriter, effortlessly tossing off lines like the album-opening "In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection" while the band plays on, unimpressed. --Randy Silver"All my favorite singers couldn't sing," Dave Berman of the Silver Jews idiosyncratically speak-croons on "Blue Arrangements." To make the point hit hardest, he doesn't sing so well himself, but it's well-taken: from Lou Reed to Bob Dylan, John Cale to Palace, conventionally "good" singing isn't the most necessary element in effective storyteller-troubadour music. Berman is a prose poet by day and rocker by night, and his lazy-sounding, countrified, skeletal, yet invigorating music celebrates the union of word with sound in a manner simultaneously classic and seldom heard. It's hard not to like a record that begins with the line "In 1984 I was hospitalized for reaching perfection." Thankfully, Berman doesn't trade in the wordplay he and collaborator Steve Malkmus are so expert at. If only Pavement's Brighten the Corners were this relaxed, full of melodic hooks, and cagily profound. --Mike McGonigal
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