David Berman broke up his lo-fi country-rock outfit Silver Jews suddenly in 2009. Amid an existential crisis triggered by both the worrying state of the world and the ills perpetrated by his father, Richard – a right-wing lobbyist dubbed ‘Dr Evil’ by one American media outlet – Berman chose to walk away from music. “I guess I am moving over to another category,” he wrote on the Drag City message board. “Screenwriting or Muckraking. I’ve got to move on. Can’t be like all the careerists, doncha know.”

Ten years later, Berman has finally returned to active service with Purple Mountains. While essentially a new band, there is much here that recalls the classic posture of Silver Jews – not least, the wry lyrical observations (“and now we stand the standard distance distant strangers now stand apart”) and, naturally, Berman’s rich, caustic baritone. But although the underlying spirit of the two bands is similar, it was important for Berman to differentiate between them. “I made one six-storey building and lo-fi sub-basement,” he explains. “When I thought to build a second, I found it would add to the quality of both to be offset from each other.”

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Berman has always had a way with a good opening line for his albums. Silver Jews fans will remember with fondness the shout-out to an ex that kicked off 1996’s The National Bridge: “No, I don’t really want to die/I only want to die in your eyes.” Meanwhile, 1998’s American Water opened with the deathless proclamation, “In 1984, I was hospitalised for approaching perfection.”

Purple Mountains opens in a similarly attention-grabbing manner: “Well, I don’t like talkin’ to myself/But someone’s gotta say it, hell/Things have not been going well/This time I think I finally fucked myself.” These lines are delivered by Berman over rollicking piano, drums and guitar that recall the rambunctious, rootsy spirit of Dylan and The Band. They suggest that the album’s ongoing mission will be to explore the void Berman plummeted into on retiring from music. As a consequence, the depression, defeat and disaffection he experienced during this period offer rich pickings for a songwriter as wry and self-aware as Berman.

The 10 songs assembled here owe as much to Townes Van Zandt’s picaresque story songs as they do Dylan’s sardonic poetics; they all gnaw at the heart and consciousness. Berman sings of life’s travails in fluid and acrobatic phrasing, with each spin revealing a nuance in tone or pronunciation that turns the lyric in a profound or unexpected way, a slow reveal that begs repeat listens. It’s unequivocally dark, relatable and addictive.

The album’s full of ghosts, from a declaration that “All My Happiness Is Gone” at track two, to a gut-punching admission at track five: “We’re just drinking margaritas at the mall/That’s what this stuff adds up to after all,” he sings, an indictment of the inanity that numbs and distracts us in desperate moments and daily routines, sugary booze in the absence of enlightenment.

But it’s not all misery and dashed hopes. Berman pens a stirring tribute to his late mother, “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son”, while “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” is a calming portrait of a snow-blanketed city. These pauses between crises are something of a palate-cleanser, of course; but even the darker tracks are helped along by the sweet, smooth instrumentation accompanying Berman’s assorted meditations. Backing vocals by singer-songwriter Anna St Louis, Jeremy Earl of Woods and Haley Fohr of Circuit Des Yeux provide a contrast for Berman’s lower-register singing.

Purple Mountains is an excellent return to form for Berman; a worthy next chapter for a songwriter who quit, many believed, in his prime. As an additional delight, Berman intends to tour the album – something of a rarity given that he’s played just 100 or so shows in his decades-long career.

“Mine is not a cry for help, but an offer to provide a kind of it,” Berman says of these splendid new songs. The truth may hurt – but, listening to Purple Mountains, there are many delights and peculiarities to be found on the road to healing.

The August 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from June 13, and available to order online now – with Bruce Springsteen on the cover. Inside, you’ll find The Rolling Stones, The Raconteurs, Woodstock, Black Sabbath, Beak>, Doves, Jimmy Cliff, Billy Childish, the Flamingo Club and more. Our 15-track CD also showcases the best of the month’s new music, including The Black Keys, 75 Dollar Bill, House And Land, Trash Kit, Mega Bog and more.

Listening to “Everything Is Your Fault”, which anchors the third album by the wife-and-husband team of Julie and Buddy Miller, is a little like listening in on a late-night argument. It opens with a gently picked acoustic guitar theme, but very quickly hardens and sours. A tambourine rattles in the background like the chains of a ghost and Buddy strangles notes out of his electric guitar, while Julie, who wrote the song, airs her grievances with unsettling directness: “You talk through me, not to me,” she accuses, then adds, “It’s so dehumanising.” On the chorus she comes up with the ultimate argument ender when she sings, “Everything is your fault, 
in the whole wide world.”

One of the most eagerly anticipated Americana albums of the year, Breakdown On 20th Ave South sounds like it was born out of frustration and distance rather than harmony and union. In the 10 years since their last record – 2009’s Written In Chalk – Buddy has become an extremely busy producer, collaborator, sideman, and 
even ship captain. In addition to tours with Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Robert Plant, he has served as music supervisor on the TV show Nashville and hosted the Cayamo Cruise for Americana artists and fans, with stops in St Maarten and Tortola. Julie – herself a deft singer-songwriter with six solo albums to her name – spent most of the past 10 years at their home in Nashville, dealing with assorted medical issues.

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In his absence, she wrote songs. Lots of them. Most were raw-nerved and even confrontational, as she waited for her husband to set aside the time to make another record with her, to follow up Written In Chalk. The couple recorded at home, playing almost all the instruments and hiring various drummers to sit in for a song or two. That alarming title suggests these songs are anchored in one place; they’re about her experiences at home rather than his experiences on the road. Julie emerges on Breakdown as the main creative agent, not only writing every song but singing lead on almost all of them and reportedly dictating the low-key, lowdown sound of the record. Buddy maintains his role as a sideman, helping to amplify her weariness even when it’s directed at him.

Written In Chalk was full of odes to impermanence, stark meditations on departure and death, and their voices blended together with a sense of collective mourning. Breakdown is somehow darker, exploring the destructive effects of love and commitment: how marriage might raise you up and drag you down, how it maims as easily as it heals. “Love will tangle up your thoughts,” they sing together on “Spittin’ On Fire”, about desire gone feral. “The heart won’t be denied, even when the lips you kissed are the lips that lied.” It’s always presumptuous to read too much autobiography into songs, but that’s a hell of a line to sing to each other.

Buddy, of course, is not the villain of the album, but someone similarly caught up in this storm of love and desire. He’s a sympathetic guitar player, his crisp picking underscoring rather than undercutting the sentiments in Julie’s songs. More crucially, as a producer for Richard Thompson, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, he specialises in homey-sounding records that try to erase the distance between artist and audience. Breakdown is similarly intimate – just two people making music together – even if the songs are meant to sound a little prickly, as though they might scratch you if you listen too closely. They only stumble when they look beyond themselves for inspiration: with its martial drums and strident pace, “War Child”, about the refugee crisis, sounds melodramatic more than outraged, and “Thoughts At 2 AM” defers to Dylan in how it addresses the times.

And yet, even on those two missteps, their voices just sound so good together: hers reedy and expressive, yet more guttural here than on Written In Chalk; his clear and high, somehow less grainy as he ages. Maybe that’s why this album ultimately sounds so generous and compassionate despite the many tensions it voices. It’s not about how a relationship falls apart, but how it holds together even in the toughest of times. That makes the sweet, hymnlike love song “Til The Stardust Comes Apart” sound like the album’s beating heart, its simple sentiments all the more powerful for being so hard won. “Our road may grow too hard with sorrow all around,” Julie and Buddy sing together, “but in each other’s arms we lay our burdens down.”

The August 2019 issue of Uncut is on sale from June 13, and available to order online now – with Bruce Springsteen on the cover. Inside, you’ll find The Rolling Stones, The Raconteurs, Woodstock, Black Sabbath, Beak>, Doves, Jimmy Cliff, Billy Childish, the Flamingo Club and more. Our 15-track CD also showcases the best of the month’s new music, including The Black Keys, 75 Dollar Bill, House And Land, Trash Kit, Mega Bog and more.