ah, this was the side of pavement i always preferred. with the double darkness lyricism of david berman. i did not get round to listening to the album before david died and now he is dead listening – like much of life – seems futile. most weekends i spend wondering how old my kids need to be before i can die without anyone noticing. most days and evenings are spent dreaming of sleep. lush and orchestrated and opulent and still this music cannot keep the darkness at bay. all his happiness is gone. how many times did he need to tell us before we started believing? i ain’t accusin’, ain’t finger-pointin’. the strings sound beautiful but strings usually do. the intro should last forever. that would solve something surely. yes i do. i too would like to create beauty before i die but i too see the ultimate futility in this. as the man from the guardian writes with tangy irony, “is berman’s relish in his vocal delivery, and the robust instrumentation, his way of telling us that he’s actually doing ok underneath it all? Hopefully. Cries for help have rarely been so clear, self-aware, and funny.” does it matter whether this is david’s finest music or his worst? really? what do you base your assumptions upon? i’d suggest losing yourself in this but where is the point in losing yourself in this. “is the album of the year a suicide note,” asks one cipher. uh, duh. i have no words of false comfort to offer here.
i’m not trying to make sense of anything.
And as much as we might like to seize the reel and hit rewind
Or quicken our pursuit of what we’re guaranteed to find
When the dying’s finally done and the suffering subsides
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
How NOT to write about music 