Drag City

The world contained on Silver Jews’ Early Times – a collection of recordings from the early 1990s – seems impossible to sustain from the first note. Obfuscated by cassette hiss, their own high-concept abstraction, and all manners of spasmodic clanging, leader David Berman and Pavement pals Stephen Malkmus and Bobby Nastanovich’s first single and EP as the Silver Jews were as mysterious-sounding as ‘90s indie rock could get. The recordings are still brilliant 20 years later because they are just as confounding, and maybe twice as beautiful. As Malkmus and Nastanovich focused on Pavement, Silver Jews would become Berman’s band, his lyrics always foregrounded. But, on Early Times, there is a fragility to the irresistible punk refrains ( “Welcome to the House of the Bats” ), surreal travelogues ( “SVM F.T. TROOPS” ), and proto-Pavement slabs ( “West S” ), where one can hear classic rock upbringings reluctantly poking through, a guiding logic behind some ace young songwriters exactly smart enough for their own good.