Silver Jews at Webster Hall

Its actually been quite a while now since I saw the Silver Jews, but I suppose I will report on it anyways. Pitchfork just put up their review, and that show was a couple days before the one I saw.

This was the first Silver Jews tour, so they weren't totally together -- DC Berman (the man who is the only permanent member of the band) read most of the lyrics off a bandstand and tripped over a couple of songs (Catpower style), but we forgave him mostly because the lyrics are so great the songs would be better than most bands even if he just read them out in a dead monotone. Come to think of it, a dead monotone is a pretty good description of Berman's singing voice (perhaps that's part of why I like the Silver Jews so much -- because I can sing along and not sound particularly worse than the original recording). But when you're listening to the man put together lines like: "I can tell you things about this wallpaper/that you'd never ever wanna know" and "In 27 years I've drunk fifty thousand beers/and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier", you don't really care if he can sing like Aretha Franklin. You just want him to get the words out. And sort of like being a Dylan fan, you eventually start to think that the singing's actually better because its not any good.

Either way, the Jews definitely rocked down Webster Hall with a setlist composed mostly of songs off their newest album (Tanglewood Numbers) and their best album (The Natural Bridge). Lots of folks prefer "American Water" to "Natural Bridge", probably because of the all the kicking riffs that Malkmus (of Pavement) lays down, but I'm a Joos purist and prefer my Berman without all the fixings, so needless to say, I was quite satisified with the setlist, which was as follows:

I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You
Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed
O Captain! My Captain!
How to Rent a Room
Animal Shapes
Trains Across the Sea
How Can I Love You (If You Won't Lie Down)
Dallas
Slow Education
Smith and Jones Forever
Sleeping Is the Only Love
Horseleg Swastikas
Random Rules
The Poor the Fair and the Good
Pretty Eyes
Encore:
Pet Politics
Punks in the Beerlight

I was about to point a couple of the songs which I particularly enjoyed, but realized I was basically going down the setlist typing out every song's title again, so I'll give up and point out that (a) more quality poets should form indie rock bands so we wouldn't have to listen to blathering lyrics such as those of The Strokes (yes, Berman is a poet and quite possibly better known for his poetry than his band) and (b) O Captain! My Captain! was probably the best song, if only because I didn't know exactly what would happen (and besides, who covers Walt Whitmann?).

Finally, links to videos from the Baltimore show for several songs which we also heard at Webster Hall, via Soi Disantra (scroll down a bit to the setlist to see the video links).

Posted by eatingbark at April 6, 2006 11:36 AM