David Berman and Stephen Malkmus Interview

By Unknown. Originally appeared in Unknown.

The setting was perfect for the Silver Jews’ David Berman and Stephen Malkmus to trade stories of days before “indie rock happened. “Those were the days spent sprawled out on friend Bob Nostanovich’s floor among “a total holocaust of clothes and cigarette butts and empty cans. ” Those were the days of making racket in Ectoslavia, a free-noise project Berman lovingly calls “a wall-of-shit-type thing. ” Those were also the days before Malkmus and Nostanovich started a band called Pavement that would release Slanted and Enchanted (Matador), the landmark album that caused a microcosmic explosion in 1992 and revealed indie rock’s allure as the new big thing to legions of imitators. And most importantly, those were the days when Berman and friends put out the first Silver Jews EP, Dime Map of the Reef (Drag City, 1991).

The two old friends from the University of Virginia are sitting in a booth at the Cedar Bar, the mythic swill house in New York’s Greenwich Village where 1950s Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline threw back almost as many punches as shots of whiskey. The Cedar was once a downtown bohemian depot where friends were less than friendly and inspiration was served as if from the bar’s tap.

Sounds like an American Express commercial, I know, but the legend fits the scene; and judging from their stories, the two Jews lapped it up like it was the “American Water” that gives their new album on Drag City its name. The inspiration Berman and Malkmus draw from each other is of a particularly demanding sort, and Berman’s body of songs and poetry has made him an Abstract Expressionist in his own right-with the emphasis on “expressionist. “You wouldn’t take a song called “We Are Real” as a revelation, but in the context of indie rock, where irony has often been taken as truth and apathy its pathway to success, it can amount to a pillar-shaking declaration. When Berman sings “We’ve been raised on replicas of fake and winding roads/ and day after day on this beautiful stage/ we’ve been playing tambourine for minimum wage/ but we are real, I know we are real,” he does so with an earnestness impossible to ignore. Not impassioned beauty, mind you-his affectless vocals make all the better the song’s earlier line, “All my favorite singers couldn’t sing”-but there’s an honesty in the song that makes Berman a real keeper in a lake full of cynical bony fish.

Berman’s lyrics garner close attention, in part because he’s an accomplished poet published in literate journals like The Baffler and Open City, but also because in his songs lie simple truths poetry often struggles to confront. “In the band I can be more bare emotionally because it’s not embarrassing to show your emotions in music,” he says. “Music butters people up for honest truths in a way that makes them more comfortable with some things that are maybe even maudlin. “While there is a definite push to the words, the songs themselves tug on the reins. The Silver Jews music is undeniably casual, strolling with a sort of bow-legged amble down the roads of country, indie rock, and folk. This wasn’t always the case, though. The Jews’ debut album, 1993’s The Arizona Record (Drag City), was a slab of tape hiss and false starts. But the band quickly cleaned up its act, and next year’s Starlite Walker (Drag City) repositioned the Silver Jews as the beautifully understated band they are today.

American Water marks the return of guitarist/singer Malkmus, who sat out on 1996’s The Natural Bridge (Drag City). His presence is plastered all over the new songs, from his wry vocals to his instantly recognizable guitar style on a song like “Night Society,” a raucous instrumental that could double as one of Pavement’s own. “When Stephen plays guitar on my songs,” Berman says. “I feel like he’s trying to play something more simple and tender. Basically, I think it’s him trying to play what I would play if I were a good lead guitarist. If you’re a leader in a band like he is, it’s a fantasy to be the silent Keith Richards archetype, a musical animal who can slither around like a panther and just be instinctual. “As Malkmus’ influence comes in and out of focus, those panther-like movements give the music a charge when it needs one or a bit of respite when it doesn’t. And the ease of the two old friends’ musical pairing gives the songs as much soul as Berman’s words. That can be a tall order at times, but when it pays off, indie rock hasn’t been so invigorating in years.

Maybe this is what Berman is singing about when he croons, “Won’t soul music change/ now that our souls have turned strange. ” As legions of followers trade guitars and songs for samplers and breaks, delusions of indie rock changing the world have faded, but that only cracks the door for modest yet ambitious records like American Water all the more. And Berman, for one, makes handy use of what he called this new “breathing space”. “I feel like rock ‘n’ roll is so fucking exciting right now,” he says. “Everything you read says the opposite. People can quit or give up, but when people stick around because they have something to say, they start to say it really loudly. ”