Music reviews
Silver Jews, Concorde 2, Brighton, May 7
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| Cassie Berman |
For about 13 years Silver Jews were a band who let their records do the talking for them.
It was only with 2005's Tanglewood Numbers album they decided to start touring and, as frontman and songwriter David Berman admitted at the start this Brighton show, was the first time the six-piece band had played live for two years.
With this in mind the whole show had an endearingly ragged edge to it. It didn't seem to matter so much if Berman's wife Cassie's vocal was a bit off on new song Suffering Jukebox, or Berman forgot the words to another newbie Strange Victory, Strange Defeat midway through.
Part of this is because Berman is not your typical rock star.
He doesn't go in for posturing, and with his big glasses, scruffy dark beard and thinning hair he didn't look much like your typical image of a rock star either.
But on the other hand, not many rock stars would step off the stage after their final encore to shake hands and chat with the front row after the rest of the band
had trooped off backstage.
Although the set was mainly drawn from the band's forthcoming album Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, which comes out in the UK in June, there was plenty of room for old favourites, including Dallas, Smith And Jones Forever and a brilliant encore of Random Rules.
It was a shame the delights of the festival and fringe meant the crowd was a little thinner than you would expect for such a great and rare show.
2:52pm Thursday 8th May 2008
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