‘I want to mean’
Poet turned indie-rock singer gained devoted following during decades of work
David Berman, an indie-rock poet whose hoarse baritone, country-tinged melodies and poignant lyrics about lost love, “MGM endings” and men with duct-tape shoes earned his band Silver Jews a devoted following for two decades, died Aug. 7. He was 52.
The record label Drag City announced his death but did not provide additional information. Berman had been living in a small room above the label’s offices in Chicago and recently told The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website, he was experiencing “treatment-resistant depression.”
He had survived at least one suicide attempt, in 2003, but said he was trying to embrace a summer and fall tour with his new band, Purple Mountains, after refusing to perform live for most of his career.
“It’s distressing to do this, but if I’m to grow, I have to do things that I didn’t do a long time ago,” he said. “I’m tired. I need to take a few risks. I can’t keep living like this.”
With a scraggly beard; long, stringy hair; and a penchant for large, square-framed sunglasses, Berman was something of an oracular figure in indie rock, known for obsessing over lyrics that featured elaborate similes and a cockeyed, world-weary outlook. “I wanna be like water if I can,” he sang in the chorus of Horseleg Swastikas, “cause water doesn’t give a damn.”
Born Jan. 4, 1967, in Williamsburg, Va., and a graduate of Virginia University, Berman was a celebrated poet in addition to being a singer-songwriter. He released a 1999 collection, Actual Air, that drew praise from writers including Billy Collins, the former poet laureate of the United States. His poems “are full of complex turns and tricks and conceptual hijinks, and yet there’s this surface clarity,” Collins told The New York Times. “You’re welcomed into the poem.”
Berman was the leader and only consistent member of Silver Jews, which he formed in the late 1980s with his university friends Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich, of the indie rock band Pavement. Initially playing out of their apartment in Hoboken, N.J., they developed a bright, lo-fi sound that mixed country, rock and the occasional horn arrangement, anchored by Berman’s half-spoken singing. “Like a brown bird nesting in a Texaco sign, I’ve got a point of view,” he says in I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You.
“There was a certain feeling of wisdom handed down constantly line after line,” Destroyer singer-songwriter Dan Bejar told The Washington Post in June. “Real wisdom or wisdom that came from something, you know, damaged or damaging.”
Under the name Purple Mountains, Berman released a self-titled album in July with a backing band featuring members of the folk-rock group Woods. They were scheduled to begin touring this weekend in New York’s Hudson Valley.
“I consider all my lines problems, and I look for solutions. The older I get, the harder it is,” Berman told The Ringer last month. “But I don’t have time for language poetry anymore. I don’t want to throw people off anymore. I don’t want to bulls---. I want to mean.”
The Washington Post