This Sunday Classic is concerned with a contemporary classic, as on Friday - 12th July - it turned five years old and that led us to a series of re-listens. It is still brilliantly droll, still wryly insightful and still absolutely heartbreaking. Happy birthday to the eponymous Purple Mountains.

Released on 12th July 2019, Purple Mountains was (unanimously) our 2019 Drift Record of the Year. Rich sonic rewards, much hilarity and a deep sense of sorrow that gradually became the darkest of darks. Much of the following is what we wrote about it in our end of year Deluxe newspaper.
Our 2019 Record of the Year is the phoenix-like return of David Berman with the absolutely incredible self-titled Purple Mountains, his perfect, final gift.

In May, a full decade after the Silver Jews auteur announced his retirement from music, Drag City mailed a set of 12”s in a box to us with All My Happiness is Gone, the reintroduction of David Berman, now as Purple Mountains. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, heartbreakingly so, he was unmistakable in both his drawling delivery and his peculiar turn of phrase, over-complicated and devilishly funny. The album followed in early July, and as we remarked at the time, “We’re pretty sure this is a very special album indeed.” It was, it is.

Warmly supported by Jeremy Earl, Jarvis Taveniere and Aaron Neveu of Woods, singer Anna St. Louis, Kyle Forester of Crystal Stills, John Andrews of Quilt and Silver Jews collaborator Chris Stroffolino, Purple Mountains sounds fantastic; gracious, warm, country-tinged ballads with pedal steel and weary harmonica, sentimental pop with phasing organs and raucous bar-room stomp-alongs. But that is just the delivery, and that is the mastery of Berman, as Purple Mountains is thematically, unrelentingly sad and bleak. Although it all plays beautifully and his winking delivery is great fun, he is unflinching about loss of love and loss of family.

In early August, less than a month after Purple Mountains debuted and just days before their first tour was due to commence, David Berman died.

The singer Jeffrey Lewis had become friends with Berman - even producing an absolutely incredible piece of art, depicting visual interpretations of Berman’s lifelong works - and it was his eulogy that hit us hardest. “I told him that I think his album (Purple Mountains) is great, but that it’s like reading someone’s suicide note and telling them it has nice grammar”.
It’s all there, and after losing Berman, each listen is harder and harder. “The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind”. The first, last and only Purple Mountains album is perfect; ten brilliantly written songs full of a sweet surface sadness, a deliciously wry delivery, and so much heartbreak in the shadows that it took a remarkably brave and skilled person to write them.

It is a masterpiece and perhaps the most fitting epitaph for David Berman.





Deep Dives

Drift | When he died, we made a playlist with some of our personal favourite moments of David Berman's songwriting. You and roll that one back, here.

Pitchfork | 15 Songs That Defined David Berman’s Heavy Magic. Read More.