EXCERPT:
Berman’s lyrics are both literate and ludicrous, but with the same desolate, heart-broken air of 1940s country and western. For example, in the song, “Room Games and Diamond Rain,” he laments: “A freight train rattles the chandelier/And we’re like plug-in reindeer/whose cords can’t stretch far enough to fly.”
Never entirely country, folk or indie, most of “Bright Flight” ambles slowly along, like the brook near Berman’s Tennessee home. The only tracks that break into a gallop are the instrumental “Transylvania Blues” and the county-fair-jamboree “Let’s Not and Say We Did.” As his words trickle out, it’s difficult to tell if Berman is improvising or slowly remembering them as he goes along.
Read the full review at The Japan Times Online.
