David Berman’s Silver Jews were best back in the bleak old days, when the line-up featured Steve Malkmus and Berman was a gammy mess of accidental drug injuries. But, like it or not, happiness comes to us all, and this is Berman’s second Jews album to feature new(ish) wife Cassie. Its songs are fittingly jaunty and faster! faster! energetic – but romantics, fear not – Berman’s sweetly barbed poetics remain, and that barrel-scraping baritone wobbles on. Which is surely something to be cheerful about.
