Purple Mountains (RIP David Berman, August 2019)

Love the idea of Berman playing the stern teacher to Malkmus’ talented but distracting class clown.

the pot thing was good, but i especially love Berman being annoyed that SM was making everyone laugh and love him. so good.

he didn't express annoyance, mind you. i'm reading into it.

here we go:

I mean this genuinely; without the contempt of critics like you, i would never have
the fight in me to live. thank you. https://t.co/22MODoE1OJ

— purple mountains (@prplmtns) July 15, 2019

of all the interesting things DCB has said in these recent interviews, the one that stands out to me is that it was a middling P4k review that - at least in large enough part to mention 10 years later - drove him away from music.

Wow, just when you thought you could not have any less respect for Pitchfork...

Tbh I'm more impressed when people notice bad reviews and move swiftly on, like Will Sheff did - a brief mention in a single lyric, just enough to register offense, then onto more interesting subjects.

I’m not necessarily impressed by that but I get it, and n some level. Middling reviews can be more discouraging than a fully negative review, sometimes.

I know at least one other musician of Berman’s Stature who stopped after the self-consciousness following a middling Pitchfork review.

Anyway, I’m probably completely off-base, but I had picture: “Snow is Falling in Manhattan” as being about Berman showing up busted in NYC and crashing on Malkmus’s couch.

getting mad about a bad review of your music is a good sign that maybe you should do something else

Not getting mad so much as getting hurt, especially if it’s psychoanalyzing the musician and not the music.

xpost? why would artists be able to separate themselves from criticism? everyone gets upset about being criticized in all kinds of work

Tbh I'm more impressed when people notice bad reviews and move swiftly on, like Will Sheff did - a brief mention in a single lyric, just enough to register offense, then onto more interesting subjects.

uh, I don't know who Will Sheff is, but I'm more impressed by any artist who doesn't mention any of their album reviews in their lyrics.

I wonder how many clicks per week pitchfork would lose if they did away with patronizing aspies by summarizing works of art on a numerical scale.

I question my fellow artists desire to read other what other people write about them. I’m not sure how useful reading it is. Maybe I’m underestimating to what extent most musicians are lacking confidence in their work. I don’t know how it’s the same as being criticized for doing shitty work at my office job.

I guess it’s impossible to avoid if you’re serious these days, with having to be hella online and all

Been digging Storyline Fever over the last few days. The guitar riff that gets repeated throughout sounds a little New Order-ish.

All My Happiness has a Joy Division-like flavour to it. The bass and the synth

most people lack confidence and don't like being criticized, musicians are the same as anyone else

A comedian I follow sometimes talks about he avoids reading online commentary, because even one negative comment (in a sea of praise) will stick out like a sore thumb — and that’s what he’ll focus on: “Why didn’t that one guy like the show, what’s his problem?” etc.

Comedians, as a group, may be even more thin-skinned than musicians... but I am surprised whenever I learn that an artist (of any kind) reads reviews of their stuff. I don’t even get why so many of them use social media at all (especially for those who don’t need to use it for promotional purposes).

I am surprised whenever I learn that an artist (of any kind) reads reviews of their stuff. I don’t even get why so many of them use social media at all (especially for those who don’t need to use it for promotional purposes).

I'm just a simple, hard-working philistine who doesn't claim to understand the high-falutin', artsy-fartsy ways of the creative class, but I suspect the main reason that an Artist might be interested to know how someone has interpreted their Art is because Artists, as a group, are mentally ill. This psychological abnormality leads the Artist to believe they are merely ordinary people like you and me, people who are typically interested in sharing their thoughts with other human beings as part of their daily lifestyle.

However, reasonable people of sound mind, such as ourselves, know better. We understand it is more appropriate that the Artist remain cloistered within an airtight bubble of solipsistic purity. There, safe from the contaminating influence of Pitchfork, SPIN, and the various social medias, the Artist must solemnly respect their self-imposed restriction on engagement with the community of Regulars, a community by which they are surrounded, but of whom they are not a part. Only in this way may the Artist's uniquely sensitive impulses be incubated and nourished.

As a result of this sacred sacrifice, we the Art-consumers are guaranteed an eternal wellspring of musical delights borne from the fractured genius of our irregular friends, the Artists. Without it, we would risk a future devoid of the "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere"s, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy"s, or the "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk"s that enrich our lives and give them meaning.

I’m sorry, there seems to be a thick haze of sarcasm obscuring the point you’re trying to make.

I think my Pavement buddy is very disappointed he just had to alert me this was David Berman and not a new psych folk bore band. I listened to All My Happiness Is Gone and was meh on it until it turned into a Camera Obscura song. Silver Jews was the show in nyc that broke me on being over going to shows in nyc. They had the absolute worst audience.

As an artist I go to extraordinary lengths to avoid seeing any reviews or criticism of what I do, and what I do is probably less than 1% as personal & soul-exposing as the average Silver Jews record, I can absolutely see how a bad or lukewarm review could throw his system out of whack

As an artist I go to extraordinary lengths to avoid seeing any reviews or criticism of what I do

But do you share your art with your friends and family? Wouldn't their opinion mean more to you than that of someone you don't know personally? If your art is more than a commodity to you, then why would you care about the opinion of someone who treats it as such?

this is such an absurd conversation, musicians and artists are just people.

Regardless of everything else on the subject, I was still bummed out to read that Berman was so negatively affected by that review. Perhaps it's easy to not immediately understand why this gifted lyricist of his stature would have his confidence knocked so hard

But do you share your art with your friends and family? Wouldn't their opinion mean more to you than that of someone you don't know personally? If your art is more than a commodity to you, then why would you care about the opinion of someone who treats it as such?

― del griffith, Saturday, July 20, 2019 6:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Friends and family are typically not very reliable critics, so their opinions can't always be trusted. Of course your boyfriend thinks you make the best techno; of course your mom thinks your songs are as good as Bob Dylan's. Putting your work out into the world allows you--for better or worse--a relatively more accurate read on your talents. I'm not an artist but I imagine it's similar to the reasons I choose to see a therapist rather than just meeting a friend for a drink to discuss the same things.

Is this the Pfork review in question?: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11916-lookout-mountain-lookout-sea/

That review, in retrospect, doesn't seem especially harsh to me

Friends and family are typically not very reliable critics, so their opinions can't always be trusted. Putting your work out into the world allows you--for better or worse--a relatively more accurate read on your talents.

OK maybe not family necessarily, but you choose your friends, and if you're choosing friends whose critical standards are wildly different from your own, well then you've really only got yourself to blame if you're not getting from them the meaningful feedback you're seeking. And to another point, I don't know that artists are necessarily seeking an analytical/critical judgement so much as they're seeking to merely share their thoughts, to be heard, understood, and appreciated in the same insightful and empathetic way that they do for others. At least that's how I like "my" artists to think, and I like to think David is one of "mine."

this is such an absurd conversation, musicians and artists are just people.

I agree with the second part of this statement!

Euuuuuuuugggghhhhhhhhh ok I was harsh upthread, really just speaking for myself as I just couldn’t imagine getting miffed in the slightest about some writing by a stranger (sorry more glib). let alone proactively seeking out random negative criticism to help me “improve” my craft or serve as therapeutic in some way... my music is just so fucking personal to me... but I mean, I make instrumental music for my own high standards of listening pleasure and I’m never really in doubt as to whether or not I’m enjoying or not enjoying something I’ve made/am currently working on. Yeah it’s different for music with lyrics and stuff. Maybe some people are just drawn to searching bad stuff out. I know I sound totally crazy and childish, sorry, bye :-(

I’m 12 years old btw

That review, in retrospect, doesn't seem especially harsh to me

It's not. This whole thing has really been blown out of proportion. If I recall correctly, he merely stated in an interview that he had made his best effort for that album and then it just kind of received a middling review. So what! People are allowed to read their own review, feel that what they've created hasn't been fully appreciated, and then not get called a primadonna for offhandedly mentioning it in an interview. If he'd further internalized it and called his next album Pitchshit Mountain, Pissfork Pee, then yeah that might signal some ego issues.

Uh, no, he didn't just say that he made his best effort and that it received a middling review. He said:

"It got a really average rating on Pitchfork, 6.7, and that really burned me for a long time. I really felt like, wow, I really tried as hard as I could and I really got the message back that maybe I had peaked. And so I decided to walk away from it."

I would say a review being the reason (or the final straw) for David Berman walking away from music for a decade is a pretty big deal! I don't think we've blown it out of proportion. (I also don't at all think he's a prima donna for mentioning it.)

I mean everyone who's been in a band there's this sort of feeling that creeps in after awhile why the fuck are we bothering with this?

I would say a review being the reason (or the final straw) for David Berman walking away from music for a decade is a pretty big deal! I don't think we've blown it out of proportion.

Alright, well, by all means then, keep talking about it until it's in the proper proportion you want it to be?

You guys aren’t going to believe this, but I was just out walking and heard a guy whistling that little melody from “Living Waters.”

The review isn't THAT harsh, but I feel like it's off the mark, kind of just makes it seem like a poorly produced, half-hearted mediocre collection of songs, when it's way better than that. I love the Nashville-sounding production, and pretty much all the songs are at least really good to great. Suffering Jukebox, San Francisco BC and Party Barge are all-time-great Joos songs in my books.

I do remember not loving it that much when it came out, but I think the record has aged really well, and is way better than most of the stuff Pitchfork hyped in 2008. Sorry, The Mae Shi.

Not sure this is the case, but if you tell someone who has cleaned up their act that their new music is half-assed...

I think Berman's reaction makes more sense if you remember just how bad Pitchfork and the media ecosystem that had developed around it were by 2008. Their ability to make or break indie acts with a single review was at an all-time high, but the level of actual engagement with the music in those reviews had ebbed. Dan Bejar registers this same phenomenon in his weird "Grief Point" monologue, speaking about an album that came out the same year as Lookout Mountain and received a similarly lazy and disinterested, pro forma good review from PF:

The message from the critical reception of [Trouble in] Dreams was quite clear: We will not be listening to you any further.

(Btw I just looked up the Pitchfork review of that Destroyer record and it's truly pathetic, just a bunch of indie rock horse-trading and market analysis. The reviewer wastes multiple paragraphs drawing parallels between Bejar's career arc and Guided By Voices, a band that his band sounds nothing like, a band that at that point had been broken up for 4 or 5 years. The concluding paragraph tells us "I caught only one pun, two snippets of others' famous lyrics, and two references to other bands" but I guess the writer+editor thought readers of this review would be more interested in William Bowers's parodies of GbV song titles than in knowing, e.g., that one of those famous lyrics is Crystal Waters' "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)". I could go on, I won't.

I was talking to one of the screenwriters of Top Gun 2 after its Comic-Con panel last weekend. Turns out the guy is a big Purple Mountains fan, believe it or not. He told me he managed to work in a last-minute line for Aging Maverick to say: "I feel the need... the need to speed into the lead suddenly decline."

Anyway, this album is basically unruinable for me, and that's good, because otherwise the sound of that third line being snuck into "Nights That Won't Happen" as an obvious last-minute overdub might've just shot the whole thing down for me like a MiG over the Indian Ocean.

How does PM come up in conversation with an action movie screenwriter?

Easy, it's all I talk about anymore. Also, he writes rom-coms too.

Was listening to the album on headphones in a small shop then took them off to hear 'Darkness And Cold' playing on their speakers. Felt nice, can't say that has ever happened before, strange for it to be a Berman-related experience

Paul, you're gonna wanna register that here, I think.

Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

I know "Darkness and Cold" is the single with the video starring Steve McNair, but I hadn't picked up on the "first and goal" football reference in "All My Happiness is Gone" until someone pointed it out to me this morning.

Fittingly, I'm very proud of myself for being the only one I know so far to have discovered the lil reference to Starlite Walker in "Maybe I'm the Only One for Me."

I wonder how many clicks per week pitchfork would lose if they did away with patronizing aspies by summarizing works of art on a numerical scale.

please don' talk like this on this board or elsewhere. instead, choose not to be an asshole. thanks.

You're right that I shouldn't have used the a-word there, but I do think numerical ratings does a great disservice to the written language. Which is kind of the whole point of a review.

Excuse me, do! Do a great disservice to it. Heh

I agree with you on that point massively actually, I think numerical ratings as a default did irreparable damage to music criticism