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new american language
Dan Bern is one of the most frustratingly gifted musicians around, excluding those who have senility as an excuse. His live performances are brilliant—he sings with such passion that his lyrics transcend the capacity of their words. One quickly overlooks his rudimentary guitar playing to see a man spilling himself into a microphone. But his studio work is uniformly dull—it's hard to remember another example of songs with such vibrancy rendered so lifeless. Heard live, most of the songs collected on New American Language sound as if they were written in blood. They are some of his most accomplished and touching songs, ones you can only get through spiritual evisceration.But the recorded versions are drained dry; they have so little feeling that one wonders if he was sedated during the recording. It's as if Bern grew so tired of the songs he wrote with his soul that he sang them with the back of his hand. Maybe the cold, plastic surface of a CD was not able to absorb the passion of the songs, so Bern just let them drift into banality. What we're left with are great songs buried under clichéd folk-rock arrangements and a detached, nasal wheeze.
"Black Tornado," a song about restlessness and spiritual coherence, exemplifies why Bern is such a promising talent, as he juxtaposes clichéd lines with fits of honest lyricism. The effect is that clichés become punchlines and lyricism a punch in the gut, resonating deeper than they would had they been contextualized differently. "I look for love/And adventure," he sings, "And I try not to let my own breathing scare me off the road/There's a tombstone of my father I visit sometimes." Sung live, as his soul escapes through his breath, the heat-stroke sensation of emotional identification is all too present.
Compared to this stage burn, though, it's agonizing to hear the song on the album, where it emerges stillborn. One day, he might be able to get every word he voices into your being—Bern has the potential to make a classic record. He's written New American Language, and that's proof enough. If he could only find the courage to let his passion seep through when he's in the studio—to put his soul in his songs, and then put blood on the tracks—he'd be remembered by people who never saw him do it. (Messenger)
—Lucas Hanft
All materials © 2001 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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