It will never be known if Purple Mountains was purposely designed to be Berman’s swansong, but it certainly provided a hell of a high note to go out on. The artist took his time in crafting the album’s brilliant, lyrical songs, Berman reportedly recording music with former bandmate Stephen Malkmus, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys as well as recording an entire album with Canadian psych-rockers Black Mountain, all of which were discarded in favor of working with members of the Brooklyn folk-rock outfit Woods.
The talented musicians in Woods surrounded Berman’s intelligent wordplay and sonorous vocals with a soundtrack of loose-limbed yet melodic rock, pop, and country sounds, even incorporating scraps of Mariachi-styled horns. Channeling the dark obsessions of his songwriter’s mind, Berman’s lyrics for Purple Mountains touch upon his struggle with depression, his troubled relationship with his estranged wife, and even the mountain of debt he faced that motivated his return to music after a decade on the sidelines. The result is a stark and sometimes agonizing self-portrait of an artist trying to keep his head above water. With Purple Mountains, Berman combined the introspection of Townes Van Zandt with the oblique self-referencing of Bob Dylan in the creation of a masterful coda to a career cut short by tragedy. (Drag City Records, released May 10th, 2019)
Review originally published by the Rock and Roll Globe website...
