Starlite Walker

SILVER JEWS: “Starlite Walker” (Domino)

‘WELL THERE’S trouble in the hall/There’s trouble up the stairs.” (‘New Orleans’) Oh, there’s trouble. Our lives are shadowed by trouble and pain. We cope with it or bust, because when it comes down to it, life is about survival and survival was never meant to be easy.

I put on Starlite Walker and I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about the hassles and the things I should do and say. They can wait. Because they’re going to have to wait until this album is over. In here, listening to ‘New Orleans’ I feel so uplifted, cloudbound. I’m up high, taken over by the sheer beauty that a few musicians can create.

If you like Pavement you’ll love this. (Steve Malkmus is part of the group). Everything that Pavement represent – that feeling of struggling innocence and integrity – can be found here. That rock’n’roll, totally-beautiful-pop-song feeling is here too. That capacity to write intriguing and thoughtful lyrics can be found here.

Silver Jews are probably too eccentric to be loved by a mass audience. But that’s okay. Yeah, there are songs here that take an unusual route. ‘The Country Diary Of A Subway Conductor’ sounds a bit like The Velvet’s ‘Murder Mystery’, all spoken, slightly incoherent dialogue, with drums collapsing and guitars choking.

Then there are songs like ‘Trains Across The Sea’, which are heart-stoppingly hummable. And these melancholy, aching lyrics: “Half hours on earth/What are they worth?/I don’t know/In 27 years/I’ve drunk fifty thousand beers/And they just was against me/Like the sea into a pier.”

Yes, if you want music born out of a deep mind, a pop sensibility and a melancholy heart, then Silver Jews are for you. They may sing about troubles but they will blow your troubles away.

• Gerry McGovern