Let’s say it doesn’t work out. You cross over from adolescence to adulthood and wind up living a life you didn’t choose. The rooms are depressing and fluorescent; the people who once offered comfort grow distant; any ambition for the future is replaced with a somewhat nauseating impulse just to get through the day.
sings to one such person in “Pretty Eyes,” at the very end of , an album he made when he was 29. His friends and collaborators in were achieving a type of success that must have seemed like a dream back when he and first met as students at the University of Virginia. Pavement had something that could conceivably be called a hit single; their videos were in frequent rotation on MTV; they were reaching the masses from festival stages and rave reviews.
Meanwhile, Berman had been living in Amherst to study under the tutelage of his hero, the poet James Tate. “To do that, I got into this MFA program,” he told in 1999, “and found out I could go up there for three years and not work. It was great.
” After several failed attempts at making a second record—the follow-up to 1994’s , a shaggy, lovable album he made with Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, and Steve West—he got together with some local musician friends in Massachusetts. At the end of the sessions, they watched as he strummed through “Pretty Eyes,” sleep-deprived and hell-bent on getting it all right in one take. In the opening verse, he sings these words: As far as lyrics go, these ones are fa.