30 Years Of Silver Jews’ Natural Bridge
Cover Art: Mike Flood
Maybe some of you who are regular readers and listeners of The Self Portrait Gospel are aware of our recent podcast series on the beloved Silver Jews “And The Nights Were Perfect, Too,” and just how dedicated and hard at work we’ve been at sharing some of the late great David Berman stories, and artistic anecdotes from friends, band members, and close comrades over the last couple of months. While it’s been rewarding to hear these transcending tales of such a beautiful yet complicated man, there have been plenty of meditative moments when the world seems less chaotic and eager to explore the endless possibilities of human expression. For the third episode of the podcast, “Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes,” Matt Hunter (New Radiant Storm Kinks) stopped by to tell us how the group carefully captured the music in a once-old gun manufacturing warehouse in Hartford, CT. But you already knew all that, so we’ll spare you well-digested details, and hope you’ll listen for yourself. It’s been thirty years since the band’s beloved second studio album “Natural Bridge” was released into the world on the first of October of 1996, the same month the New York Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves in the World Series, as well as the same year the beloved Chris Farley and David Spade cult comedy Black Sheep saw the two for the very last time in action together on the big screen. Berman summed a brilliant cast of musicians for this merciless masterpiece, including Matt Hunter and Peyton Pinkerton from New Radiant Storm Kings, Rian Murphy, Michael Deming, and Thom Monahan; the album is blissfully dark, downright delightful, and completely ahead of its time as far as the grunge era knew. Like a celestial star collapsing in on itself with no one around to witness its melodic mayhem, Berman tapped into something spiritual during this period in his career, and while “Natural Bridge” may come before “American Water” (!998), it most certainly could not come after. It features the album’s opaque opener “How To Rent A Room,” “Pet Politics,” “Dallas,” “The Frontier Index,” and “Pretty Eyes.” It’s almost impossible to imagine this album not existing, and who would want to occupy such a captivating coil without this subliminal soundtrack of a lifetime? As I said earlier, we’re not going to write anything here that you haven’t already heard or read, so we’ll end it with this: “When I was younger, I was a cobra. In every case, I wanted to be cool. Now that I'm older and subspace is colder, just wanna say something true.” God bless you, Mr. Games. We love and miss you.
“I was living in Charlottesville at the time and spending a lot of time in Lexington with Steve West’s family. I was in the (Natural Bridge Park) gift shop and realized if I called the album Natural Bridge, everything in the store would be instantly be converted into promotional merchandise. Sort of like my idea for the band Trad. Arr. that would infuriate record collectors and rock critics who would normally never deign to acknowledge ‘my work’ by covering their most treasured objects into advertisements for my band.”
