Purple Mountains (RIP David Berman, August 2019)

The nod to "Melt With You" in the chorus of "All My Happiness Is Gone" must be intentional, right?

Huh, it really does sound like "Melt With You"...

DB is looking like a Brett Gelman character

got a bit of a "Take The Skinheads Bowling" kinda vibe too

I also heard “melt” in the chorus but didn’t bring it up because I want to forget it’s there

Is he still together with, whatshername, Cassie? (It’s none of my business, but the video pointedly projects a “lonely old guy” vibe, so made me wonder...)

Thought I saw Cassie in the video

No one deserves to be called whatshername. But yeah, the whole ol' gang makes an appearance in the "when we last left our heroes" intro footage from the Joos' final show at Cumberland Caverns.

Tour dates this summer! http://www.brooklynvegan.com/david-bermans-purple-mountains-announce-debut-lp-share-single

Good to know (I did that as a rhetorical move, to signal that I don’t presume to be on a first-name basis with these folks)

Rhetorical devices POX

I like the cover art a lot -- are those Egglestons? Because if not, they are some of the most Egglestonian Eggleston imitations I've ever seen.

There was an interview with Bob Nastanovich a few years back where he mentioned that Berman had been making "sculptures" out of toys and things he'd found at thrift stores (it's around the 30-minute mark here: http://vishkhanna.com/2015/02/18/ep-165-bob-nastanovich-of-silver-jews/), and the middle picture on the right of the album cover looks exactly like one of the ones he described, so I'm gonna guess these are Berman orginals. Also pretty sure I've seen pictures of him with one or both of those dogs.

Anyway, Bob kind of made it sound like the artwork was inspiring some new songs, and it seems like some of the photos correspond with the tracklist (the second picture is the cover of the All My Happiness Is Gone single, bottom left goes with track 7).

yeah the plastic dayglo toy sculptures and their mirror-image photos are all over his twitter https://twitter.com/prplmtns

and speaking of mirror-imagery, who knows, maybe "Snow is Falling in Manhattan" is a reference to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QDiST2a0q0

I worry about DB’s mental health but yeah it’s none of my business and as long as he can keep it together I guess he’s ok

That’s Just the Way That I Feel is available for download on itunes.

From Drag City newsletter:

TOUR DATES:

Sat-Aug-10 Pine Plains, NY Huichica East
Sun-Aug-11 Jersey City, NJ White Eagle Hall
Mon-Aug-12 Philadelphia, PA World Cafe Live
Wed-Aug-14 Washington, DC Black Cat
Thu-Aug-15 Asheville, NC Grey Eagle
Fri-Aug-16 Knoxville, TN Pilot Light
Sat-Aug-17 Nashville, TN Mercy Lounge
Mon-Aug-19 Louisville, KY Odeon
Tue-Aug-20 St. Louis, MO Blueberry Hill Duck Room
Wed-Aug-21 Iowa City, IA The Mill
Fri-Aug-23 Minneapolis, MN Cedar Cultural Center
Sat-Aug-24 Chicago, IL Sleeping Village
Sun-Aug-25 Chicago, IL Sleeping Village
Tue-Aug-27 Toronto, ON Lee's Palace
Wed-Aug-28 Montreal, QC La Sala Rossa
Fri-Aug-30 Boston, MA Sinclair
Sat-Aug-31 New York, NY Murmrr Theatre
Fri-Sep-06 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Festival
Fri-Sep-13 Seattle, WA Neptune
Sat-Sep-14 Walla Walla, WA Huichica Walla Walla
Sun-Sep-15 Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom
Wed-Sep-18 San Francisco, CA Chapel
Sun-Sep-22 Los Angeles, CA Lodge Room

Purple Mountains Online:
Drag City-https://www.dragcity.com/artists/purple-mountains
Pre Order-https://www.dragcity.com/products/purple-mountains
Stream "All My Happiness Is Gone"-https://ffm.to/purplemountains

I met failure in Australia
I fell ill in Illinois
I nearly lost my genitalia
to an anthill in Des Moines

we're just drinking margaritas at the mall
that's what this stuff adds up to after all
magenta, orange, and acid green
peacock blue and berberine
drinking margaritas at the mall

we're just drinking margaritas at the mall
this happy hour's got us by the balls
magenta, orange, and acid green
peacock blue and berberine
drinking margaritas at the mall

"all my happiness is gone" is completely stunning.

^ it is.

I got to listen to the whole new album last night, and I'm so pleased with how Woods turned out at his new backing band. So good. They're a natural pairing. I think it's the best the music behind DCB has sounded since American Water. Woods just excellent in their own right too - I only found out about them in the last year and pretty quickly I realized they were exactly the kind of band I'd been looking for. Picking up Pavement's torch actually, as it were

The Spotify page has two other remixes of the single.

Where are people hearing the album? Is it press promos? I'm in no hurry, I've waited this long and can't be bothered with p2p leaks anymore. Just interested if there's label promo money behind this.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/micheal-sheen-sang-silver-jews-how-can-i-love-you-if-you-wont-lie-down-on-last-nights-the-good-fight/

I think it's the best the music behind DCB has sounded since American Water.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/david-berman-was-the-cult-musician-who-went-away-for-10-years-what-made-him-finally-come-back/2019/06/03/19735620-77db-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a0300e94ffbb

Really interesting article... I didn’t know a lot of the backstory (or even that Drag City has a “message board”).

Yeah, not sure if they meant the Drag City newsletter or what. Also, surprised there's a place to live above their offices -- mostly artist-studio-type spaces without showers and so on.

it's neither, it's the old disc.server board:

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/18043.html

He toggles from the virtues of silence as the most powerful artistic statement, as laid out by Susan Sontag in her 1967 essay “The Aesthetics of Silence” (which he insisted I read before our first meeting), to the virtues of getting banned from websites for trolling (which he admits happened to him)

Odds on Berman posting on here at some point?

I don’t get the feeling he necessarily “loves music.”

hasnt stopped any of us before tbf

lol

The wapo interview's pretty good. Answers a few questions I had and confirms a few suspicions about the Chicago loft and the separation.

The option of anonymous posting on the disc.server board was one of the greatest things about it in its heyday. Guaranteed daily chaos. That's the board where, late one Friday night around the time of Bright Flight, someone posted David's home phone number. I called it, thinking I could just say I was only trying to alert him to its presence if he was irritated about it, but sure enough he picked up and gave no indication of irritation whatsoever but was in fact totally cheery about it and chatted with me, the lowly internet fanboy, for a good ten minutes, wouldn't let me go even, despite the fact there were all kinds of voices and noises in the background on his end from a party at his house that sounded like it was still going strong.

“He liked it when I called Jack White ‘Sir Edgar Scissor Blues.’ ”

lol

Is this legit?: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/purple-mountains-lodge-room-highland-park-tickets-61917164907

The wapo interview's pretty good. Answers a few questions I had and confirms a few suspicions about the Chicago loft and the separation.

The first thing I thought on watching the "All My Happiness Is Gone", was 'oh no, he and Carrie have separated'

Cassie not Carrie

morrisp -- there are a bunch of tourdates announced upthread.

new album is ... pretty great? still absorbing, but a bunch of really good songs / lines.

Cassie not Carrie

Yes! Sorry Cassie.

xp Thanks, I missed or glossed over that

Interesting how this isn’t sold out in a small Chicago club, whereas Silver Jews would certainly sell out the Metro or Vic pretty quickly.

don't underestimate brand recognition. I doubt Robert Pollard sells anywhere close to the number of records Guided by Voices does. The mid-or-late-career moniker change is a tough thing to navigate (though Sun Kil Moon, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Magnolia Electric Company--to name three off the top of my head--made it work, I guess)

I bet labels hate when established bands / artists / solo acts change their name

Yup. I bet 80+% of people who'd pounce on a Silver Jews ticket don't have any idea that Berman is back under this name.

We ended up buying tix for that L.A. show (final show of the tour?); I bet it would have sold out already under the Joos name / "back in the day."

intentional sabotage?

Listening to the promo right now, as it happens.

That's the board where, late one Friday night around the time of Bright Flight, someone posted David's home phone number. I called it, thinking I could just say I was only trying to alert him to its presence if he was irritated about it, but sure enough he picked up and gave no indication of irritation whatsoever but was in fact totally cheery about it and chatted with me, the lowly internet fanboy, for a good ten minutes, wouldn't let me go even, despite the fact there were all kinds of voices and noises in the background on his end from a party at his house that sounded like it was still going strong.

I mean this era was, according to the article, his “crack” phase

Well sure, that is true, but it was also soon after 9/11, which was everyone everywhere's crack and/or some crack variant phase. Besides, I also got to chat with him after the Asheville show in 2006, with all crack and/or crack variants out of his system, and he was still equally cheery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZKMa-ByLBQ

ok that little thing at the end made me laugh hard

still these videos might be getting a little too real for me

i laughed when he was sweeping something into a dustpan and then looked up at the camera to deliver the back-up vocal

personally that's not the vibe I get tbh

i think it's an album about facing depression, frankly, with humility and humor. the self-deprecating parts of the album are humane, not self-lacerating, and actually finding that narrow line and walking it.

the disease took him in the end but this is the testimony of a survivor. if it wasn't, then "nights that won't happen" would have been the final track rather than "maybe i'm the only one for me."

otm

Has this made the rounds? I found it today and it made me smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXLcpX2xUt4

For all his grouchy reclusive mystique, I get the impression that it seems like he really enjoyed dishing out little bits of himself like that, little painless things that he knew people would find special.

Mounting mileage on the dash
Double darkness falling fast
I keep stressing, pressing on
Way deep down at some substratum
Feels like something really wrong has happened
And I confess I'm barely hanging on

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s worth arguing whether this album is hopeful or resigned. It’s both. Guy was obviously in a battle. Love it to so much though, still finding corners and lines from it that hit me hard a zillion listens in.

xpost those lines are so good

Just saw this pop up on Spotify, haven't listened yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDE6_NUqagE

could not get through more than 10 seconds of that garbage

some old correspondence from DC Berman to Arthurt, 2004

https://arthurmag.com/2021/10/27/you-cannot-underestimate-how-big-a-deal-this-hair-thing-was-at-the-time-david-berman-on-a-certain-shift-in-punk-culture-in-the-1980s/

is that Shakey’s brother or did I conflate some weird ilx dreams w reality

It is.

?

(Arthur Mag’s Jay B.)

Yeah, been going through the old drives and email folders. I also recently posted an Actual Air-era transcript of an interview I did with DCB; only a very small part of it was published. Happy to share it, nice to remember him just riffing and laughing.

https://jaybabcock.wordpress.com/2021/10/25/live-from-mallard-crossing-david-berman-on-actual-air-interviewed-by-jay-babcock-1999/

nice, thank you for posting that!

thanks for posting this archival and new(ish) stuff, it's been a real joy to see this stuff pop up on the Twitter timeline

LONG LIVE ARTHUR MAGAZINE

^^ hell yeah

also i didn't know about the shakey connection, that is cool as well. i miss shakey over here

Silver Jewel.

The pleasure is mine. I wish I had kept more of our correspondence/etc., but I think this is all there is. Always wonderful to hear from David. Such a bright spark.

Purple Mountains is still a gut punch of a listen. Especially that incredible run from All My Happiness is Gone through Nights That Won't Happen. It seems like so many different ways, equally true, of experiencing and expressing grief. "She's Making Friends, I'm Turning Stranger" manages to perfectly capture that kind of long-term dissolution of a relationship, where you can see it coming and the depression just piles on itself. "Margaritas at the Mall", drinking and temporary rallies alternating with sincere laments that god isn't saying anything, even if you're listening. then the devastating Nights That Won't Happen, which has a heartbreak for the future that isn't wild or rash but is instead well-considered. Knowing that his actions would cause such horrible harm to others, and believing it was still the best decision. that is really hard to capture, and somehow he got the words down and the Woods' arrangement was there in the perfect way for it.

All of that makes Snow is Falling in Manhattan hit even harder, in the middle. It's so melancholy, but it's also like a little light, a very humble grasp toward comfort.

Great post KM, thanks for that and a reminder to pull this one out again.

still find it kind of tough to listen to Berman! but I'm sure I'll get back into it.

big credit has to go to Woods for much of the music and arrangements. I've always enjoyed their musical aesthetic but have been mostly indifferent to the singing and lyrics. in my mind they were a great match for berman. they have a natural tendency toward the light in their music, and at times on purple mountains they sound like they're almost pulling berman along with them to get it done. even in the more poppy songs, he sings stuff like "i confess i'm barely hanging on..." and the music, aptly, hangs uneasily there for a bit before the thwops of the snare drum snap him into the first chorus. there are lots of little moments like that. it's hard to listen to at times, but everything is in there for a reason

https://www.stereogum.com/2196025/bonnie-prince-billy-shares-cover-of-the-ramones-outsider-recorded-with-david-berman/music/

xp - yeah, I was glad to see your appreciation for Woods, I think they brought a lot to that record (though I've been a big fan of them for awhile anyway)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XTrz0yvxe0

https://www.creem.com/fresh-creem/david-berman-purple-mountains-final-days-feature

Looks promising, but damn paywall.

Straight forward to join for a month, if you haven't previously done so.

Happy should be 57th birthday. Still miss you.

The bareness and honesty in that Purple Mountains record is extraordinary. There's nothing quite like it. I loved his art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvogt_5lhkM

incredible

So great

Good candidate for Artist-specific music jokes

Someone apparently asked Gate Pratt about this and he said he had never seen the show when he wrote the original that was sent to Berman. (Berman finished writing it and later arranged it with Woods.) It is amusing how they have a similar vibe though.

Huh, weird that Gate Pratt doesn't get a writing credit on that one. (He does get one on "Maybe I'm the Only One...") Not that I don't believe him, and this was pretty clearly a coincidence in any case.