Mystery of Silver Jews

A Silver Jews sighting is like that of a white tiger — as rare is it is mysterious.

The musical outlet for founding singer-guitarist David Berman, who is also an accomplished poet, the Jews have only toured once (in 2005-06) since their 1989 genesis.

Reached by e-mail, Berman wrote that along with a general dislike of performance, one reason is because his art focuses on the ordinary more than the exotic. Touring — whether across America or in Israel (as captured by a recent documentary on the band) is a “weirdly uncreative slice of life.”

“To deal with the lack of solitude (during touring), you harden in other ways. It’s life on hold,” he wrote. “Performing builds your ego. Sitting at home and writing is building your songs through a process that kills your ego. It means failure every day until you get it right.”

In creating his idiosyncratic form of southern gothic, Berman relies more on New York’s pubs than the backroads of Tennessee. His songs combine Johnny Cash with the Cure’s Robert Smith; Faulkner’s stories with those of Robert Stone.

“I have been influenced by all kinds of gothic romanticism and cut it with my middle-American pragmatism,” Berman writes. “‘Southern writing’ is always self-conscious about ‘southern-ness’ in a way that scotches the whole deal for me.”

Moving to New York after university because “exile is the way to go for a young man who wants to think deeply,” Berman began pulling details from his life “in a jigsawed way” between shifts as a security guard at the Whitney Museum and working alongside a shifting lineup of musicians, including Bob Nastanovich and Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and the Jicks.

Asked if being regarded as a “literary musician” affects his perspective on the ruminations of critics or fans, Berman wrote he’s less worried about his music than his poetry. That’s because, in his opinion, music doesn’t really get scrutinized; good thing, since most bands “would be exposed as feeble, thoughtless (and) phoney.”

“If for one month, records were scrutinized with the rigor and standards of your average film critic … it would be a massacre,” he wrote.