Dan Bern is one of the more freewheeling folk revivalists around — or should that be folk-revival revivalists? Coming at you like a ringer for Dylan before easing toward the tenement-tough delivery of underground New York rocker Willie Nile, the native Iowan has indulged over the past decade in wooly humor and political barbage.
On Breathe, he reins in his lively excesses to conduct some intensive soul-searching. It’s a nice departure. Even while wrapping himself in loneliness and regret, he avoids self-pity through the sometimes startling force of his language and the loose, self-effacing appeal of his personality.
There’s madness around the edges of these songs, most of which reflect an insecurity in being understood — “Sorry if my clouds/Are in the mirror/But in the window it’s clear” — or remembered. On the extended reverie “Past Belief”, Bern howls at the absence of godliness in our lives: “The waters are rising/And the world is on fire/We’re all just gasoline/For the funeral pyre/In the palaces morons/In the hospitals ghouls/Murderers in the towns/Rats in the schools.”
But there is admirable resilience in his determination to “ride through this storm,” and an irresistible tenderness in songs such as “Tongue-Tied”, on which he tweaks hearts merely by drawing out the “so” in “It’s been so long/Since I talked to anyone.”
Produced by old Springsteen hand Chuck Plotkin and featuring Bern regular Eben Grace on guitar, banjo and mandolin, with a vocal chorus and accordion among its warming effects, Breathe strikes just the right balance between folkish austerity and studio smarts.
