reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

Guided by the haunting, melancholy vision of leader David Berman, the Silver Jews' sixth full-length release, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, is another collection of moving, intellectually challenging and emotionally rich jewels, played by perhaps his strongest band yet. The group’s organic, sly counterpoint playing throughout wrings every bit of subtle melody from Berman’s meticulously crafted and arranged songs while his wry, talk-sing delivery remains the perfect vehicle for his penetrating lyrics, which are in turns acerbic, touching and whimsical. “Pain works on a sliding scale/So does pleasure in a candy jail/True love doesn’t come around/Any more than fate allows,” he intones on “Candy Jail,” his intimate, “non-singer” voice so understated that slight inflections are able to communicate universes of nuance. A self-described “resurrected ex-nihilist,” he deploys wife and bandmate Cassie Berman to great effect here and throughout the album, her vocals adding just the right amount of sweetness to his sour. On “Suffering Jukebox,” one of the record's many standout tracks, he lets her deliver one of his most poignant lyrics: “Suffering Jukebox, such a sad machine/You’re all filled up with what other people mean/Hardship, damnation, and guilt/Makes you wonder why you were even built.” Is the jukebox Berman? “The jukebox is more likely a cover band singer working shifts of the honky-tonks of Lower Broad in Nashville,” he explained in a recent interview. “At another level it is me. At another level it is the obsolete, the left behind , the ignored.” Or maybe even you and me. - Robert Mortellaro