Silver Jews

I tried to grab a setlist after they were done, but two rotund Silver Jews fans, preternaturally oblivious and obstinate, cock-blocked me before I even took a step. As a whole, Silver Jews fandom seems an unforgiving slog, an effort fascinating enough to keep but one that breeds a classic aloof stare, the kind tagged to the dopey face of the poor bearded sap that took a six-volt battery to the chest. Dave Berman, half a set away from making the whole show an uncomfortable night, was so stymied forty minutes into a malfunctioning monitor that he yanked out the battery, considered it, and then looked off-stage to the supposed culprit. At this presumed jerk he heaved his Energizer and caught the stoolie in his rubbery pecs. Turns out, the guy was just there to see the show. Berman, further agitated by the non-reaction of his target, leapt off the stage—anachronistic slacks billowing, his bulge waving—fell into the people around the guy he wanted to confront and then was informed that he had wasted a tossed battery. Berman never apologized.

I suppose that Dave Berman is as compelling as ever now that he’s doing official touring musician stuff again; the rest of the awesomely talented band stoically stepped aside and kept playing when Berman got that comic, hissy-pitching shadow in his eyes. We were smack up against the feet of lead guitarist Peyton Pinkerton, who was dressed in baggy black suit and blood red button-up, uniform’d like the rest of the guys in the band sans Berman (who was tall, pacing, and inverted like a sapling). Pinkerton’s heavy brow was miles away, maybe arched and relaxed on stage with the Pernice Brothers sometime, years before: here, he was made of wax and restraint, brushing his strings more than playing along and tapping only the most conservative of pedals despite having a vast array. How he could club the lustiest moments of “Punks in the Beerlight” from Berman’s grasp or bounce “I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You” on his knee without disrupting the ghosts of slide guitars are beyond me. “New Orleans” became charged and rightfully pocked, that dagger finally pulled and the other shoe dropped. From what I could tell, Pinkerton was stealing the show because that was what he was built to do.

The second half of a Silver Jews show, then, after the battery has been thrown, is when Berman tries to wrest the show back. How he did that was mostly through a feigned moping and Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea cuts. When at some point during, I think, “What Is Not But Could Be If” he toppled his mic stand and regarded it with emotional unavailability, Cassie Berman sidled up under his hunched shoulders and reassembled his mess with something that appeared to be genuine, unabashed concern. Nothing tragic, just knowing. Like, when pristinely belting through “Suffering Jukebox,” she seemed to finally sense the goofy insecurity in David’s whole career and, tuned in, kept singing about the stupid music machines that brought them together to the Wonder Ballroom that night in the first place. If the Bermans suppose that anyone could get up there and sing-speak about jails made out of candy out of pitch, then, fine, the very idea of going to see a band live, up on a stage, has been mocked. Thanks a lot.

More curious but inevitable was having live spectacle Monotonix open. They’re a Tel Aviv band; it’s Rosh Hashanah; playing with the Joos—get it? Like a sludgy prototype of Les Savy Fav in every imitable way, Monotonix carried their drumkit around the venue, up into the balcony, and howled into the fecal-smudged microphone with careful, well-pronounced pieces of English sentences. Singer Ami Shalev, newborn goblin spawn of David Crosby and Wilford Brimley, never blinked except to flit the remnants of placenta from his eye. Their few identical songs only glutened bouts of hysteria into digestible morsels, and when they were finished the walls bowed, sweat, and stank. We used the band’s pied piper strategy to duck around to the front of the stage before the main event.

Which carries us all back to the point at which a jettisoned battery slapped some undeserving schmuck in the sub-jowls. As Berman climbed back to his awkward nest, said schmuck continued his unaffected stance but, instead, with a purpling of shame in his cheeks. Apparently, he thought, the assault was coming and had come and that’s that; Berman had warned everyone as much by not hiding his dislike and frustration with touring in interviews and preceding that warning with years of misanthropy. Or so it seemed. Perhaps he’s encouraging the rest of us to go home, lock up, and make the stupid music he’s making about stupid shit suffering like only un-stupid shit can. It’s no secret, he seems to be communicating through a whiny 90 minutes. If that’s the case, he should let his band in on the bait-and-switch and then maybe they’d noticeably enjoy themselves more. They, it appears, are the only ones really getting hornswoggled. Those of us remaining, enlightenment dawning, reluctantly admit to a wonderful show.