“I no longer want to make a record that launches 100 meaningless paragraphs,” David Berman says as he takes a sip of his tea. Wearing a rather stately cardigan over a button down oxford and carrying a pile of brightly colored folders tucked under his arm, Berman looks more like a college professor than a rock star. With this is mind, it seems only fitting that he would much rather talk about America’s history than his new album. Luckily the two are intertwined.

When Teddy Roosevelt addressed the Boys Progressive League in 1913 he was no longer a Republican, but the leader of the Bull Moose Party. His platform called for tariff reform, stricter regulation of industrial combinations, and women’s suffrage. This was his great attempt to make a comeback in the world of politics by taking a step towards change, but many people were disinterested in what he had to say. The 26^th president looked to these boys for campaign help by uttering words he had once heard on the football field, “Don’t flinch, don’t fall and hit the line hard.”

“There’s a strange irony to the fact that he’s speaking to these kids who would be of draft age in WWI and that this was the last year people would be able to travel without a passport,” Berman explains. “It was the beginning of one world and the end of another in so many ways.”

On the Silver Jews new album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, Berman makes use of Teddy’s quote to link yesterday with today. For those of us who are used to hearing people talk about the pre- or post- 9/11 world, his comparison of then and now is not farfetched. Like Roosevelt, Berman is looking to address a younger audience, something he is doing for the first time in his career.

“People older than me run and own the world, but people my age are managing it,” he says. “The younger generations are in a phase where they must take their roles.” Where others believe today’s youth are too cynical or self involved, Berman believes growing up in such a media saturated environment has made them smarter. “You’re not trying to cross your arms like Kurt Cobain and say you don’t want anymore of this.”

“Today’s adults don’t seem as dependable as the old adults. These new ones are cocky and incompetence is going on,” Berman continues. “They’re really good at making money, but have a real lack of foresight and an unwillingness to plan long term.” The “fuck everybody else” attitude of the adults combined with a group of young people who are invested in the future, he believes, is a good thing. Although kids “aren’t raging against the machine per say” they are trying to get their voice heard and plan ahead for their kids, and their kid’s kids.

After years of struggling with drugs and depression, Berman is much more optimistic about life. He wants to pass along what he has learned to others in hopes that they will be better prepared for what is to come. Although he has started to look on the brighter side of some things, he still focuses too much on the bad reviews. “Certain ones, you can’t even say why, but certain ones I’ve glanced at years ago still echo at a certain moment like, ‘You’re no good’,” he says. He does believe that they do push him to do better despite his struggle. “I have a relationship with these voices and I have almost imagined a relationship with a vague entity called “Rock Criticism” as either being indifferent or despising of what I do,” Berman explains. “And it’s all neurotic stuff, but…”

His wife Cassie was quick to interject, “I’ve been with him for about 8-years now and my natural tendency when someone isn’t happy is to try to make them happy, but maybe I don’t have to keep putting on the band-aid and patching him up every time.”

“So you’re going to become an uncompassionate wife to drive our income up?” Berman asks jokingly.

Cassie will tell you she is wife, bassist and backup singer, but she is also the one who reminds David they are meeting friends for dinner after our interview so he shouldn’t eat a sandwich. She should also be the one fans thank for the Jews first tour in 2005. “Because he doesn’t leave the house much, someone needs to make sure he’s going to like eat,” Cassie says, right before admitting she also has to go to sing her vocal parts.

Their 9-year age gap allows for a teacher student aspect to their musical relationship with Cassie admitting that she “in a way” has gone to Silver Jews songwriting school. But when they are in the studio they are band mates, “It’s not like, ‘oh honey, could you change that part?’ It’s like, ‘Do this. Do that,” just like it would be with the drummer or the piano player.”

Berman first spotted Cassie in a photo from NME while she was on tour with her then band. She is quick to dismiss him, but you are tempted to believe Berman when he tells you her first band broke up because fans were more interested in looking at her than the guitar pyrotechnics happening at the other side of the stage. She was a self taught bass player who played in a few bands, but believes studying the art of improvisational playing from a local musician in Nashville where “even the dentist has a demo” allowed her to really put her mark on the new album adding country riffs that were not there before. Being more comfortable with the instrument this time around also gave her more freedom to sing. “I felt like I knew the songs and wasn’t coming on like garnish at the top,” she admits. “I felt like I could develop harmonies.”

Berman agrees that there is something to be said about the way Cassie comes into the album quietly first heard singing on the third track “Suffering Jukebox” but soon enough is adding her own harmonies on “Open Field” and singing right along side him on the final song. “I think that has a lot to do with how the album is sort of like a prologue,” Berman says. The beginning of the album has the narrator talking about a corrupt world and though it is still corrupt by the end he has found a solution in companionship. “It really starts with “what could be” …and goes out on “we could be looking.” Sort of an inversion,” Berman explains. “It’s bounded by these two, sort of, statements about possibility.”

Berman thinks both the opener “What is Not Could Be If” and the last track “We Could Be Looking For the Same Thing” are externally about hope and taking on a sentimental perception, one that would be hard to find in earlier work. It also looks at getting older and understanding things you couldn’t before. Berman believes compromise seems evidently clearer to you after you’ve experienced suffering. “I never thought I’d write a song sort of with the people of the Big Chill generation in mind, but that’s really what I was thinking about.”

Berman also compares the album to two people who meet in AA. They come in alone, but leave together. They both may not have the same idea of what is important, but they are able to agree that there is love there and even though it isn’t perfect it is worth it. “It’s my way of sort of getting the most un-cool, un-rock ‘n roll message of all: settle,” Berman says with a chuckle. “Settle for just having something in common. You don’t need to have the exact thing; you don’t need to fight for purity.”

“I don’t know about settle,” corrects Cassie, “It’s more like try.”

Maybe there’s more than just two ways to look at the album.

Words by: Shannon Carlin. Photos by: Brent Stewart