Letters Have No Arms !: 1998

Choosing a favourite Silver Jews lyric is a bit like choosing a favourite jelly bean. When asked, you might reply ‘apple’, or ‘cotton candy’, or even ‘cherry’. Yet, your favourite will change the very next time you eat another.

And you listen to Silver Jews for words.

The music itself is almost incidental to the words contained within. The icing on a cake if you will. Or a dress on a pretty girl.

To say David Berman has a ‘way with words’, well, is a bit like saying the Sun has a way with heat…

I won't even begin to mention the amount of times Silver Jews were the soundtrack of something in my life. Lonely nights and early mornings. Falling in and out of love. Growing up. Dreams. Above all, dreams.

Random Rules (American Water, 1998)

"In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection"

"I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls.
Maybe I've crossed the wrong rivers and walked down all the wrong halls."

"I asked the painter why the roads are colored black. He said, "Steve, it's because people leave and no highway will bring them back.""

Horseleg Swastikas (Bright Flight, 2001)

"I'm drunk on a couch in Nashville
In a duplex near the reservoir.

And every single thought is like a punch in the face, I'm like a rabbit freezing on a star.

On the wrong side of Sunday morning, shattered in the terrible light. Working for a bankrupt circus, on the wrong side of Saturday night"

Pet Politics (The Natural Bridge, 1996)

"Guard my bed, while the rain turns the ditches to mirrors. By a vase of carnations from central Ohio where the looking machine can't hear us. Deep in the night we dream of positions, there's a line for the phone in the hall. And in the cold places where Spanish is spoken, most wars end in the fall"

I remember me (Bright Flight, 2001)

"Out the window, in the harbor he saw a little ship The moon was worn just slightly on the right. And they slow danced so the needle wouldn't skip, until the room was filled with light"

Inside the golden days of missing you (The Natural Bridge, 1996)

"The shattered glass cussed, and when it broke it spoke to us, it said "Hey... I know you... what's your name?" I wish they didn't set mirrors behind the bar cause I can't stand to look at my face when I don't know where you are. Then the feeling fades away but you sort of wish it would of stayed, inside...the golden days of missing you"

We are real (American Water, 1998)

"Up the hill past 694, at the stone wall make a left, and I will see you soon my friend if these old directions still direct.
Is the problem that we can't see or is it that the problem is beautiful to me?"

Trains across the Sea (Starlite Walker, 1994) "I just got back from a dream attack, that took me by surprise. And in there I met a lady, her name was Shady Sides and she said: It's been evening all day long, it's been evening all day long and how can something so old be so wrong? Sin and gravity drag me down to sleep to dream of trains across the sea, trains across the sea. Half hours on earth, what are they worth? I don't know. In twenty-seven years I drunk fifty thousand beers. And they just wash against me like the sea into a pier"

Suffering Jukebox (Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, 2008)

"While these seconds turn these minutes into hours of the day all these doubles drive the dollars and the light of day away"

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