Purple Mountains is the only studio album by American indie rock band Purple Mountains. The album was released on July 12, 2019, by Drag City. It is the final overall album by David Berman before his death on August 7, 2019, less than four weeks after the album's release.
Purple Mountains was the first new studio album from David Berman since the disbandment of Silver Jews in 2009. Created over the course of four years, the album went through numerous failed attempts at writing and recording with different musicians and producers including Dan Auerbach, Dan Bejar, Stephen Malkmus and Jeff Tweedy. It was eventually recorded in 2018 with members of the band Woods, in both Chicago and Brooklyn. Woods members Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earl produced the album.
The album's themes were inspired by the death of Berman's mother, his retirement from music, his struggles with depression, and his strained relationship with his wife. Berman also made the album in hopes of paying down a six-figure debt he had built up. It was preceded by the singles "All My Happiness Is Gone", "Darkness and Cold", and "Margaritas at the Mall". On release, the album received critical acclaim and was featured in numerous year-end lists.
Background and origins
In January 2009, David Berman disbanded Silver Jews, playing one final show on January 31 at the Cumberland Caverns in McMinnville, Tennessee. He later revealed that he was frustrated with the reception to the final Silver Jews album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (2008), including a 6.7/10 review from Pitchfork. In a podcast interview with Vish Khanna in 2019, Berman said, "In that point, in 2008, a Pitchfork review really meant a lot [...] That really burned me for a long time. I really tried as hard as I could, and I really got the message back that maybe I had peaked. So I decided to walk away from it." Berman also said he felt older musicians stuck around too long, and that he could step away and make room for someone else. When Silver Jews disbanded, Berman retreated to his house in Nashville, Tennessee, and "buried" himself in books. In an interview with The Washington Post in 2019, Berman said, "I saw no one and did nothing." Berman, who long suffered from treatment-resistant depression, said to Khanna, "There probably were a hundred nights over the last ten years where I was sure I wouldn't make it to the morning. Yeah, I'm a very depressed person. And I felt even worse about myself as time went on and I wasn't doing anything. So I do feel better now having completed this project."
When his mother died in 2014, Berman was inspired exactly a week later to pick up his guitar and play while he was in her house in Wooster, Ohio. He eventually came back to the chord progression he had played and it became "I Loved Being My Mother's Son", the first song written for the album. He also separated from his wife of twenty years, Cassie Berman, in 2018. Berman said they did not divorce and were still friends, commenting, "She's all I have as far as family anymore." Their separation is the subject of the album's third track, "Darkness and Cold". It also inspired the album's sixth track, "She's Making Friends, I'm Turning Stranger". Berman also attributed his return to music as a necessity for an income in order to pay down the over $100,000 of debt he amassed in credit card debt and loans, which he said was always over his head and "draining to worry about."
In Nashville, Berman befriended The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, who had recently moved to the city. The two would sometimes collaborate, with Auerbach writing music and Berman writing lyrics, but Berman backed out as Auerbach focused on other projects. However, Auerbach has a songwriting credit on the tenth and final track on Purple Mountains, "Maybe I'm the Only One for Me". Auerbach's side project, The Arcs, performed an early version of the song on their 2016 tour. Berman also co-wrote The Arcs' song "Young", which was released in November 2015 as part of their six-song EP The Arcs vs. The Inventors Vol. I.
Production
2017 sessions
Berman first reached out to Canadian musician and Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar through e-mail in the fall of 2016. He did not know Bejar personally but was a fan of his music and had read Bejar say positive things about Silver Jews. Bejar had never produced before but told Berman he was willing to try, and the two made loose plans to work together. Berman, who "famously obsessed over his lyrics," went on an "extended eight-month West Coast walkabout". He spent time writing in Joshua Tree, California. His wife Cassie came out for his 50th birthday in January 2017 and they rented a place in Malibu. He then drove to Portland, Oregon, and rented another place for three months in order to write.
From April to July 2017, Bejar and David Carswell set out to produce the album at JC/DC Studios in Vancouver, Canada. The band for the sessions included members of Destroyer. Berman's longtime friend Stephen Malkmus, the frontman of Pavement and a fellow founding member of Silver Jews, also worked in the studio for a few days. Black Mountain drummer Joshua Wells and bass player Colin Cowan also participated in the Vancouver sessions. Berman stayed in Point Roberts, Washington, a US enclave located south of Vancouver. He attempted to write there, but found he could not finish the lyrics. Bejar recommended recording the music first and finishing the lyrics later. Berman felt the music they recorded was "rigid" and ultimately found writing lyrics for the music, which he had never done before, to be impossible. Berman returned home to Nashville to re-write the album and eventually found his previous problems had "solved themselves."
In a January 2020 interview with Pitchfork, Bejar reflected that he had trouble getting Berman to sing in the studio and that, compared to the songs on Purple Mountains, the songs they recorded were "incredibly loud and brittle and dry and compressed" with vocals similar to that of Serge Gainsbourg. According to him, there were "lots of really wild lines that would have fit in more with '90s Berman—just blasting images, more manic, which was actually the state he was in". As the process continued, Berman became disinterested in said lyrical material and most of it went unused. Bejar also revealed that there are "halfway to final mixes of an album's worth of music" but that the decision to release them is up to Drag City. He also indicated that he is unsure if Berman "would have wanted the world to hear it."
2018 sessions
On February 14, 2018, Valentine's Day, Berman separated from his wife and drove from Nashville to Miller Beach, a neighborhood of Gary, Indiana. He lived there in Gary for part of 2018 in a "vacation cabin" owned by Drag City. In June 2018, Berman moved to Chicago, Illinois, living alone in a spare room above the Drag City office. He eventually reached out to Jeremy Earl of the band Woods very early in the morning by email. He asked Earl and fellow Woods member Jarvis Taveniere, both of whom he had never spoken to before, to produce the album. The two, who had listened to Silver Jews together for years, agreed almost immediately.
The album was recorded primarily at Jamdek Studios in Chicago, with some parts recorded at Thump Studios in Brooklyn, New York. Most of the album was recorded live with Berman occupying a booth while Earl and Taveniere were together in a separate room. Berman had pages of alternative lyrics for each song with him. They did multiple sessions of overdubs and Berman wanted to retry vocals. However, for many of the songs they ended up using the original first take vocals because, according to Taveniere, "they were hard to match." The last song Berman wrote for the album was "Darkness and Cold", which he also claimed as his favorite on the album. The album also features contributions from Woods drummer Aaron Neveu and from singer-songwriter Anna St. Louis, who recorded her vocals in an hour during a mixing session in Los Angeles. The album was mixed by Taveniere in November 2018 at Electrical Audio in Chicago.
Berman had also at one point worked with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who did "spec production work" on a few songs, but Berman decided to go in a different direction for the full album.
Music and lyrics
Khanna and Berman both viewed the album as a "break-up record". The opening two songs feature dark lyricism juxtaposed against "jolly" instrumention. "Maybe I'm the Only One for Me" was intended as to be from an incel's perspective and was, in his eyes, the "ultimate neo-liberal love song, as we sit in a place of peak individualism".
The album's lyrics are heavily inspired by Berman's lifetime struggle with depression and addiction and the circumstances of his life in the years preceding his death. He had separated from his wife and told Vish Khanna, "I don't have any desire to be in a relationship with anyone else, and I do feel like I'm on the other side of my career of being a Lothario". After his death, some listeners suggested that the album may have been a suicide note. Gate Pratt, a college friend and writing partner of Berman's, has said that he discussed many songs including "Darkness and Cold" and "She's Making Friends, I'm Turning Stranger" with Berman many years before Purple Mountains. Pratt dismissed the notion that the album is a "suicide note". Commenting on "Maybe I'm the Only One for Me", Pratt said: "That song was intended to be hopeful and upbeat and optimistic — like a recognition that you could be happy alone. Him putting that song at the end of the album was intentional and, I think, meant to signal, 'I'm okay with all this.'"
Release and promotion Announcement and singles On December 12, 2018, former Pavement and Silver Jews member Bob Nastanovich revealed on his podcast Three Songs that David Berman would release new music in 2019 under the name Purple Mountains, which was also the name of Berman's blog. The name "Purple Mountains" is a mondegreen of the lyric "Purple mountain majesties" from "America the Beautiful". Although, his blog was also titled Menthol Mountains at times.
On May 10, 2019, the single "All My Happiness Is Gone" was released on vinyl by Drag City. The single included two remixes of the song, "All My Happiness Is Wrong" by Noah Count and "All My Happiness Is Long" by Mark Nevers featuring clipped recordings of Dave Cloud, and also indicated that a full-length album was a "couple months away." It credited Berman as well as Jeremy Earl, Jarvis Taveniere, and Aaron Neveu of Woods and songwriter Anna St. Louis. The single was released digitally on May 17, 2019, with the announcement of a full-length album. A remix of "All My Happiness Is Gone" by Australian electronic music group The Avalanches, who Berman has collaborated with in the past, was commissioned by him, but a licensing issue prevented their version from being released.
"Darkness and Cold" was released as the album's second single on June 11, 2019. A music video directed by Ben Berman (who is not related to David) was released the same day. It stars David and his wife Cassie as she prepares to go out for the night without him, reflecting the subject of the song. "Margaritas at the Mall" was released as the album's third and final single on June 28, 2019.
Tour