Albums of the Year # 9 Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

From July, my 2,000th Song of the Day. A very, very sad story this one as it panned out. But still a very good record.

David Berman has returned after a ten year sojourn 'playing chicken with oblivion' with a self titled album as Purple Mountains rather than as Silver Jews, his previous creative incarnation which folded ten years back. The resulting record is as good an argument for prolonged procrastination as you're ever likely to hear in this or any other year. It's something of an instant classic. The ying to the yang of Bill Callahan's Shepherd in a Sheepskin's Vest, released a few weeks back. In many respects the two sound like companion pieces to me.

But while Callahan has found domestic contentment and calm, Berman most certainly has not. Purple Mountains is an extended metaphor on middle aged unease, not not mention chronic depression. The fact that it's also a highly entertaining record rather than a chore or a dirge is  testimonial to Berman's considerable gifts. The record serves as a panacea for our increasingly troubled times.

It's by turns funny, wry and profound, containing several of Berman's career best moments. This finds him, like Callahan pitching his tent in Leonard Cohen's kingdom, while also crafting a deeply felt personal statement. Take a verse of lyrics from opener That's Just The Way I Feel; 'I met failure in Australia. I felt ill in Illinois. I nearly lost my genitalia. To an anthill in Des Moines.' No one can write lyrics like these for the so called Post Modern existence we find ourselves experiencing now. Except perhaps Callahan. And as he's too well adjusted to do so in the here and now we can only be grateful that Berman still can and chooses to.

The record flows with sublime, if troubled grace. It touches upon areas that might seem like too deeply dark concerns for popular music such as musing on the loss of your mother in I Loved Being My Mother's Son, which deals with just that and the inevitable, phenomenal waves of grief that ensue after she has passed. That Berman manages to do so and the end product is warm and actually life affirming is really remarkable. In the words of a friend of mine and another devotee, 'he walks the line.' Better than anyone else right now.

So if Callahan is now a glass half full guy, Berman's is half empty. You could worry about him, but perhaps gratitude for accomplishing this record as a way of dealing with all this is a more appropriate response. Berman's father, David Berman is a political lobbyist whose organisation runs campaigns advocating reactionary responses to smoking, cruelty to animals, not increasing the minimum wage and on and on ad nauseam.  That this acts as continuing grist to his son's creative mill is an inevitable conclusion. That he manages to compose such a rich canvas from this and other life ingredients, his ten year time out to read books and experience depression that he's emerging from for starters, is a cause for celebration.

So this is a state of David Berman and also a state of the nation address at one and the same time. It succeeds in spades on both counts. The lyrics are sublime. The arrangements , (just Berman and a couple of members of Woods for the most part), divine. This particular series on It Starts With a Birthstone, has now reached 2,000, meaning I've now managed an unbroken consecutive run that stretches beyond five years and towards six. Purple Mountains is one of the very best records I've heard in all that time and is more than a fitting recipient for song(s) 2,000.