Oh noes! Everyone is hating on Radiohead today. Silver Jew David Berman to P4K: “You can go through the whole new Radiohead album and try and tell me what they’re saying, and all you’ll get over and over again is things are miserable, don’t try, things suck. And it’s all gray. There’s nothing there. Never before has there been a ‘greatest band in the world’ who had so little to say about anything.’” But gray is my favorite color.
You Might Also Like
 Watch Thom Yorke Play Jonathan Ross |  This Is The Worst Radiohead Tattoo |  Check Out The Insane Guest List For Radiohead At Irving… |  Watch Glee Cover Radiohead’s “Creep” |
 |
 |
Leave a Reply
Sign in Sign in with FacebookYou must be logged in to post, reply to, or rate a comment.
%s1 / %s2
Who cares? I don’t hear anybody saying that Silver Jews is the greatest band in the world.
Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
Radiohead was Nietzsche’s favourite band.
boooo! i thought this was gonna be about They Might Be Giants.
ahahah so did i!
Not true! Thom Yorke is on the record repeatedly as saying there are at least two colours in his head.
what was not but could be if?
EXISTENTIAL SHIT
so silly. everybodys getting all riled up lately just cause everybody’s blogging about how f’ing awesome radiohead’s stadium-sized shows are going. its not that him & hold steady guy don’t have valid opinions based on valid points– the beatles weren’t revolutionary every single day of their lives either, etc– but being at those shows, and feeling how pros get a crowd of thousands & thousands feeling the same fantastic things– i just really don’t care about any kind of psychoanalytic critique of the big guys from the little. radiohead’s putting out undeniably respectably good stuff, even if another musician i respect finds fault with it. just seems pretty laughable to bother blowing all this out of proportion.
I have said for a long time that Silver Jews were the greatest band in the world. Radiohead….eh, average and mediocre. Who would want to admit that Radiohead is the greatest band in the world?
musically, radiohead are one of the greatest bands in the world.
but lyrically, david berman is at the top of the class. as far as songwriting, “american water” is the greatest record ever written, period.
100% OTM about both bands. i agree: on a purely songwriting/lyrical level, “american water” is the greatest record ever written.
Berman isn’t saying you can’t like Radiohead. Just that he doesn’t get it. And neither do I. Never have, never will. But, about a billion people own Pink Floyd records, and I never got them, either. It doesn’t really matter.
No matter what happens now
I won’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.
And by the way, that’s just a fucking dumb comment. Hail to the Thief is the only musical effort I can think of that any band has made to capture post-911 paranoia and the re-emergence of totalitarianism as a potential political reality — the themes of imminent/unavoidable violence, blind obedience, and anxiety are all incredibly relevant to that (this) political moment. What the fuck was Silver Jews singing about in 2003? Punks in the beerlight? Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Mr. Silver Jew has also come out against MMJ/Jim James. in conclusion, he has shit taste and should stfu.
And to add to that, I remember when Radiohead played Bonnaroo 2006, My Morning Jacket were watching backstage and Jim James told some news source that he didn’t see what the big deal was with Radiohead. I think Kings of Leon also went on record at the same show saying that they weren’t Radiohead fans which is ironic since that got an Airbag shout out at APW. Does anyone remember this?
if there’s anyone who should STFU forevermore, it’s grace6697
Dear silver jews,
you guys are terrible. i can only hope you guys quit music. i can only compare your musical mediocrity to the drone of ben stein’s speaking voice. it is embarrassing that you think you can even talk about radiohead, let alone bash their brilliance. do us all a favor, stop playing music.
The idea that Radiohead don’t have anything real to say on In Rainbows — I get where it comes from, but it’s not true. Pay attention to what’s actually being sung about on the album, and I think the message is really clear. Relationships deteriorate (“House of Cards”), people screw each other over (“15 Step”), bodies die (“Arpeggi”), but that’s life. Savor the temporary connections. Keep all the good stuff on your videotape.
David Berman: good poet, boring musician.
I honestly haven’t tried to understand the lyrics in In Rainbows yet. The music is so beautiful that the lyrics don’t even matter. Does anyone think Radiohead are great just because of their lyrics? I don’t think so. They’re not Bob Dylan. Who says lyrics have to be all happy and deep? If you make a song like Nude or All I Need it doesn’t matter.
Is this “People Making Ridiculous, Asinine Critiques of Radiohead Week” or something? They’re not saying anything? Where the hell does he get that? I think In Rainbows is a stunningly beautiful album, as a whole. And I actually get a lot of hope from the songs; if not from the lyrics, then from the music itself. Berman is obviously entitled to his opinion, but I think his statements are ludicrous.
I can’t help but wonder if some of these band members are just jealous because Radiohead dabbled in unorthodox self-distribution and succeeded. After all, bands of Silver Jews’ caliber probably could never successfully do a “pay what you want” deal, or have the financial freedom to experiment to the extent Radiohead has. But who knows?
He’s not correct. He’s really not. And since when does angst or defeat as a recurring motif make for bad music? Elliott Smith, anyone?
And considering that Radiohead are doing their part as activists to clean up the world, I’d say it’s even more of a moot point to pretend like they’re Debbie Downers with no resolve for anything beyond complaining.
After Robert Pollard, David Berman is my favorite lyricist of all-time (and his book of poetry, “Actual Air,” is simply brilliant), but I will have to respectfully disagree with him on this. For the most part. Some of Radiohead’s songs DON’T say anything. (My favorite song, in fact, “The National Anthem,” doesn’t say shit–and that’s okay!) As far as being “jealous” of Radiohead’s success, I would have to say that the Joos have never really tried for it (I mean, David didn’t even tour for over fifteen years into his career–and that’s ostensibly committing commerical suicide).
I can?t say someone?s opinion is wrong, but I can state my own. I dig Radiohead?s lyrics. I rarely go out of my way to read many of them from beginning to end like I have many other bands in my life, but I definitely catch a lot of it through listening. They are often abstract. They are reminiscent of the first half of The Cures career?even sometimes a little bit Jack Kerouac. I like the style that lends to a lot of imagery that can become something personal in the listeners mind. Like I said, I can not disagree with opinion, but I can say tat in mine?I think a person that needs some sort of neat tidy narrative and clever rhyme schemes and all, well that person is just a bit boring. I get many different things out of the lyrics?and Yorke?s voice alone. I don?t even have to know what he?s saying half the time. It?s a fine instrument?it is.
“Hail to the Thief is the only musical effort I can think of that any band has made to capture post-911 paranoia and the re-emergence of totalitarianism as a potential political reality”
Hi. See Pearl Jam. Thanks.
Silver Jew (with stephen malkmus in the lineup) = greatest band in the world (with stuff to say)
Berman has repeatedly insisted he values lyrics as much as he values the music– this isn’t very surprising in that regard. Lyrically, In Rainbows is a bleak album. Here is an example of Thom’s bleak worldview from each song:
1.”How come I end up where I started ” 2. “I am trapped in this body and can’t get out” 3.”Don’t get any big ideas/they’re not gonna happen ” 4.”Everybody leaves/If they get the chance” 5.”I’m an animal/Trapped in your hot car ” 6.”we thought you had it in you/but no” 7.”Reckoner/You can’t take it with you” 8.The infrastructure will collapse/Voltage spikes /Throw your keys in the bowl/Kiss your husband goodnight” 9. “I never really got there/I just pretended that I had” 10.”Mephistopheles is just beneath/and he’s reaching up to grab me.” The Silver Jews have offered bleakness in the past, but from where Berman is now (he and Yorke now virtually in their 40s) he’s got some perspective on this. Check out this lyric from the new SJ album:
“I hope I don’t come across as a coyote in your eyes
But I’ve been around some and I’ve seen
Enough to know we could both spend happy lives
Inside the days of you and me.” It’s inarguable that it’s written from where the world actually is, because humans relate to it without feeling alienated (like they do when reading Radiohead’s lyrics), but I don’t get the sense that David is downing Radiohead; if people didn’t love feeling alienated Radiohead wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are today.
Those quotes are out of context.
In Rainbows is the most positive Radiohead album.
Surely we all agree that “Videotape” if nothing else is uplifting in its meesage… Even if the album version is botched.
Its stupid. I refuse to see the world in terms of happy/sad or black/white. I got mad respect for Dave, but this seems like he needs to give them a closer look lyrically. As it stands he sounds ill informed.
And yes. I’m a songwriter and no I don’t think I’m better than homeboy. I just have prolly spent more time with this album (before it was even recorded!) than he has.
“I refuse to see the world in terms of happy/sad or black/white.” — this is perhaps the driving force of Radiohead’s lyrical bleakness– their jackhammer, in your face, constant denial of life’s crucial absolutes.
Thom has always spoken and vague generalities that any poet would probably laugh at. But then again, the man never claimed to be a poet. He’s a rock singer and an emotive one at that. I think Berman is absolutely correct, but I also thing his observation is absolutely irrelevant.
I fail to see the hype with In Rainbows. It’s just a bunch of songs, no better than some other group’s bunch of songs. except we’ve been acclimated to accept them as genius based on the “Radiohead brand,” repeat listens and the assumption it is of value based on other things we thought were valuable [though probably because we understood less about them at the time]. But honestly, with the exception of the irrelevant electronic flourishes, there is very little on the collection that hasn’t been done before by someone else, ten, fifteen or even 20 years before.
Media has reenforced the notion Radiohead is of significant value without ever explaining the value musically. It always appeals to a cult of personality/cultural distinctions for value. The marketing of their record is irrelevant. The reviews of critics are irrelevant. The natural acclimation and appreciation multiple listens automatically impress is irrelevant. What is relevant is the music and music history and frankly, with so much else going on in the late 90s to 2000s[from Boredoms to Lightning Bolt, from the Smell to the Silent Barn, from the Liars to Ex Models, heck, even the umpteenth electro revival], how can anyone still get seriously excited by Radiohead’s version of rock music?
Now, Amnesiac, that was an album to get excited about.
you’re missing the big picture…..radiohead have consistently and with guise of effortlessnes produced some of the finest pop music any of us will ever know. Can you honestly listen to “climbing up the walls” without feeling a little uneasy and creeped-out even after all these years? Doesn’t yr body tingle when thom hits that perfect note during “nude”? That’s all. That’s why they are so highly regarded.
Scott Evil: You’re an idiot
nude is the most negative song on in rainbows, but that’s because it’s an old song. if its message doesn’t please berman perhaps this is because he is a musician who makes money living his dream, and cannot identify with the anxiety it expresses. (yes i recognize the irony in that statement.)
aside from that a great deal of in rainbows is about growing older, finding contentment and acceptance. some of that is not transmitted directly in the lyrics since the songs are pretty sparse. reckoner is a good example of this, and also a song which musically feels like a sunrise after a storm. which could be a description of the record in general. if a band can make a record which addresses negativity while still leaving the listener feeling serene by the time the last track ends, all the better. see: ok computer. i find it difficult to imagine walking away from in rainbows with a negative feeling. maybe berman needs to stop waiting for the lyrics to tell him what to feel and think while listening to music. that or just listen exclusively to bands which do that.
how come no bands are coming out saying how terrible they think coldplay is?
because it’s not controversial.
When you are the big dog, little dogs nip and your heels regularly. This is nothing surprising. If Radiohead criticized a band like SJ, they would be bullies. When this dude criticizes them, it’s free publicity.
Bruno, do you know anyone who makes music independently? This isn’t a “marketing ploy.” I guarantee it didn’t even pass his mind. David Berman has never given a shit what anyone says/thinks. I’d be surprised if he even uses a full-time publicist. He, like most indie artists, probably pays for one two/three months of the year and it’s probably someone who was his friend first. He wouldn’t have essentially fired his backing band [Pavement] if he was big on getting big. He also would’ve toured during the 90s. Berman is a real musician/lyricist for whom money is relatively inconsequential [his records aren't exactly bank busters, because the craft is in the music and the lyrics, not the studio techniques]. If he wanted more money, he’d simply release more cheap records. You know, the Guided by Voices strategy.
well said. thanks for replying to that idiot’s post.
Dramamine,
Music that feels “like a sunset after a storm?!” WTF are you talking about? Music is music. The medium is the message.
The feeling a record leaves you with is relative. Yellow Swans leave me breathless, but I’m not going to argue they’re inherently unique or the greatest. Those sounds get that reaction from me. To me, the best albums are those that are most unique [Trout Mask Replica, Faust's I, Twin Infinitives, etc.], those that took the most time to be understood theoretically and aurally. Radiohead sure isn’t on that list. Very traditional music, relative to very innovative music [which is a term that changes over time, for example, Mingus' Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was probably the most unique jazz record of its era, but an album made from similar constructs would now be a boring rehash]. Radiohead are unique for a pop band. But, alas, they’re a pop band.
I think arguing over who is a great band is ultimately pointless, but that doesn’t mean that someone’s not right. If I think Radiohead’s music is beautiful, and R-dawg disagrees, one of us is unfortunately wrong. The problem lies in the terms we’re using. One of us says a band is “the most unique,” another says, “no, they’re not good, but The Zombies were!” We’re simply valuing different aspects of music more or less than one another, but the ultimate beauty of the music is inherent and unchangeable– beauty isn’t changing, only the effect it has on us. Hitler’s pageantry was just as hideous in 1938 as it is now, and The Divine Comedy was just as beautiful in 1320 as it was in 1920. I think talking about which particular qualities are of more value is a more interesting discussion. I can’t stand music that seems to be pushing the boundaries of theory. I prefer predictability to uniqueness; I find it both intimidating and mysterious in a very difficult way–I much prefer Marty Robbin’s “El Paso” to anything by Captain Beefheart because of this. I’m interested in trying to understand why so many people are as vocal as they are against “sameness” or “predictability” in music. That’s life.
silver jews: a guy who writes songs because poetry on it’s own isn’t a justifiable artistic means in modern world. more of a writer than a musician.
radiohead: a band that makes music that also has writing with depth that cannot be caught on the first one or two listens.
silver jews: writer first
radiohead: musician first
and on the subject of the hold steady guitarist…wtf? theres someone else in the band besides Craig Finn. Guy should stfu….hard. Before he is known as the former guitarist of hold steady.
p.s. i like all three.
I see you gracefully swimming with the country club women
in the Greenwood southside society pool.
maybe that was a subliminal diss ?? eerryyyyy
You are on a boat in the middle of the ocean, standing on a plank. You are wrestling with the paradox of life that brought you to this end, which puzzlingly resembles the beginning. You know that death comes to us all, but you don’t know what death is, or should be. And you certainly don’t understand what you’ve done wrong that has lead you here. One by one, you take 15 steps, and then a sheer drop off the plank into the water. Now, at this point, you are quite strongly reminded of the limitations of your body as you struggle to breathe and untie your hands. But a part of you just wants to give up. Why should you get any big ideas? They’re not going to happen. Because right now, it seems like everything you’ve ever found or felt disappears and fades into the failure that is your fate. But another part of you doesn’t believe that your mind is dirty for having hope. And through this struggle, you’ve revealed the conflicting aspects of your self, consequently stripping yourself nude, finally setting course to escape your body.
So where does your hope come from? Love. You’ve loved before. You’ve been loved. And how can you escape and be saved? Follow your Love. The eyes of your Love turn you on to phantoms. You follow to the edge of the earth and fall off, because everybody leaves if they get the chance, and this is your chance. So you hit the bottom and paradoxically escape upwards and beyond, because you’ve finally realized that Love is all you need. Love is the next step, waiting in the wings. Love is in the middle of your picture, lying in the reeves. You are simultaneously flying in the sky among rainbows and sunken at the bottom of the ocean. And the reason that before you couldn’t figure out what you had done wrong is that wrong is not distinct from right. It’s all wrong. It’s all right. There’s no real reason. The entire conflict of your mind was nonsense. Your head was full of feathers. But that aspect of you got melted to butter. And now you are nearly In Rainbows.
So you begin to see with new clarity all the aspects of your life that once were characterized by endless paradoxical cycles. You’ve experienced a human life, full of bittersweet distractions, all in the pursuit of pleasure yet so many times leading to the opposite (the paradox). And the thing that ultimately characterizes all of the things that distracted you from the path that transcends the paradox is that you had been trying to calculate between right and wrong–trying to reduce things, to break them down, for the sake of understanding them–when doing such actually created false dichotomies that made it impossible to see the way it all fits together as a whole. Your mind was a reckoner–a device designed to assist in calculation–and because you separated all of the aspects of your self and your life, it rippled your reflection and you couldn’t see the whole. But now you can dedicate this realization to all you need–Love–and consequently become In Rainbows.
So instead of separating it all, you fall off the table of reductionist calculations and get swept under by the notion of seeing everything as one whole. Your Love becomes universal. No matter how it ends. No matter how it starts. (Your Love IS the Universe–before the Universe and after the Universe, there was and will be no matter.) You forget about the structures of your life that were confined to calculating risk, safety, wrong, right, bad, good–your house of cards–and you want your Love and everyone in the world to do the same. But not everyone will do the same. The paradoxical cycle still exists in the world for others who remain in denial about what you’ve realized. You believe that their ears should be burning for not hearing what you have to tell them. And in the frustration of not being able to get through to them, your memory throws you back into old situations when you lived life aimlessly, lost in the heat of distractions. You remember the blur of alcohol and misguided intentions with another, and you notice that the repetitiveness of the music that was playing in the background resembles the cycle of your predicament–the beat goes round and round. You feel like you never really became In Rainbows, but rather just pretended that you had, because how could you be if other people like the one you were with that night simply ran away and will never realize what you realized? Doesn’t becoming In Rainbows necessarily depend on the whole–on every component?
But as you remember the light that shone on the back of the other, who was dancing away, you realize that everyone as a human has the capacity to become In Rainbows–the light is available for them to see. And you suppose that perhaps, just like the steps you took as you walked the plank, becoming In Rainbows is a process that occurs one by one, like a jigsaw falling into place, however slowly. So the world will not become fully In Rainbows while you are alive, but you can still leave behind the message of what you’ve learned. Even though you can’t communicate this message face-to-face to everyone in the world, you can leave behind a videotape. After all, the image from a videotape as it is reproduced on a television screen is actually composed of red, blue, and green lines, and you hope that some people will realize what that symbolizes. Meanwhile, your Love will always be your center. And Love should be everyone’s center. Because if Love is your center, then no matter what happens, you won’t be afraid, because you will see the whole and consequently know that each day is the most perfect day.
who gives a shit what david berman thinks??
So i never heard of the silver jews before and now i know why….went to their myspace and almost puked in my mouth at how brutal these guys are…radiohead is selling out 25,000 a night and these guys are playing shit bars in shit towns….reminds of when Liam Gallagher said oasis will be bigger than the beatles….not that the 2 comments run parallel, but that you have a lower level musician spouting off about another band and he is full of crap….nice one silver jews, keeping hacking out crap and you shall remain where you belong, as nobodies.