Paul Bergmann
Stars and Streams
SELF-RELEASED
7/10
As some would say, to live is to prepare: to prepare for domestic renovations, exuberant matrimonies, the awe of childbirth, deaths of loved ones. To live is to bask in life’s mystery, all the while coping with the only true inevitable. Our actual life exists on the fringes of preparation.
As many will counter, though, the end of preparation is the beginning of life, and those fringes—cosmic sensation—are in full view on Stars and Streams, the latest release from Los Angeles–based folk musician Paul Bergmann. Bergmann, who recorded the album in one day and describes it as a “field recording of a subconscious,” isn’t quite concerned with any granularity; only warmth.
In opener “No One Ever Tells Ya (You’ll Feel This Way)” Bergmann can’t help but contemplate his own solipsism with all the operatic lull of a young Dylan: “My life is made of glass and only I can see through it.” Songwriters have been stuck in their thoughts forever, but the head is only fertile ground if we’re allowed a peek inside.
He gives us a few. In “100 Years,” he sings, “I won’t be around / One hundred years from now / My throat will close somehow / And I will be a cloud.” Then, a soft whistle, because words wouldn’t suffice.
“Goodbye,” the longest song on the album, is where we finally begin to conceive fully of Bergmann, albeit slowly. In a booming drawl, he sings, “I never thought that this would end / I guess I’ll always think and wonder / If I’ve truly lost a friend.” With or without concept, the album glows. For Bergmann, the great harmonic enchanter, being itself doesn’t hold a center point. And that’s the point. It’s in all of us, distributed equally—a whisper all of us can hear.
