PitchFork: You’ve done a lot of work with your friends in Silver Jews. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with David Berman.
Steve Keene: I think about David every day. I feel a little cursed by David [laughs]. I mean, if you liked David, you really were obsessed with David. The Silver Jews’ music, I wish I could hear it objectively. I wish I didn’t know David, just to hear the music, because that was David in real life. David was so funny and just interesting, everything he said.
PF: What was it like to hear that last Purple Mountains record?
SK: I played it for the first time like two weeks ago, and I liked hearing it. It made me feel better. It’s pretty bleak, but the thing about David is that everything was slightly tongue in cheek. I’m glad it’s almost three years removed, now I can see a little bit of humor in it. It’s not just death and destruction—it’s irony and all this stuff.