Starlite Walker

VINYL FORMAT. David Berman and Stephen Malkmus, the principal Silver Jews, met at the University of Virginia in the late '80s, around the same time Malkmus was flying home to California on vacations and starting Pavement. The Silver Jews' first two EPs shared Pavement's noise-straddled, lo-fi aesthetic; on them, the Jews sounded like a scaled-back, literary Pavement. (Pavement, in turn, took on the Silver Jews' sense of lyrical exploration, and has continued traveling down that road deep into its career.) STARLITE WALKER is the Jews' first proper album, and it benefits from Pavement's concurrent emergence as an indie-rock powerhouse. Pavement boys Steve West and Bob Nastanovich come aboard with real percussion and quaint touches like pedal steel guitar and toy piano, giving the Silver Jews a wider musical scope than previously attempted (to go along with studio production that adds miles and miles of clarity). But even as the Jews' country-rock tunage and offhanded rock references echo the "end of an era" calls of Pavement's CROOKED RAIN, CROOKED RAIN, Berman steers the songs toward thematic waters that aren't quite so pronounced. His songs have a novelistic flow, with meanings cast behind lyrical stories full of historical detail and rhymes that spin out of easy control. He seems to be playing the part of Robbie Robertson to Malkmus' Bob Dylan.