Album reviews: Purple Mountains, Blood Orange, Winkle

Purple Mountains

Purple Mountains

(Drag City *** ½)

It’s a big bummer that David Berman’s marriage to his wife, Cassie, fell apart and that the former leader of the Silver Jews seems to be going through a midlife crisis so grim that he’s written a breakup album full of songs with cheery titles such as “All My Happiness is Gone” and “Maybe I’m the Only One for Me.”

But the good news is that Berman, a poet as well as a singer-guitarist who led the Silver Jews from 1989 to 2009 (initially with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich of Pavement as members), is back at the top of his game. Real life travails are giving his crisp, self-critical songs a gravitas that’s hard to come by in the indie rock world. With his deadpan vocals and a musical vocabulary that’s increasingly leaning toward country music to better express home truths (try out “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son,” for a devastating death-of-a-parent ditty), Berman is funny, ironic, and completely serious when delivering lines like “You see the life I lead is sickening / I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion.” Life-affirming stuff! — Dan DeLuca

Winkle

Great Unknown

(Self-released *** ½)

The full name is Don Lee Van Winkle, and he started in a popular Philadelphia band, the American Dream, whose 1970 debut was produced by Todd Rundgren.

His exceptionally moving new solo album comes after the sudden death of his wife, Kathy McDonnell. Recorded in Nashville with some of the city’s top session players, Great Unknown moves easily between rock and country.

A deep vein of loss and longing runs through these new compositions. “Something’s missing, you’re not here / Still I’m waiting for you to walk through that door,” Winkle sings on the aching country-soul ballad “Waiting.” On the rocking “No Message From You,” he confesses, “Visions of you keep rushing through my head.”

Through it all, while Winkle lets his sorrow flow, he carefully avoids maudlin self-pity and gives the songs a universal resonance. And, cued by the anthemic title track, which opens the set, the ultimate sense is one of resilience rather than resignation, fueled by loving memories of what he once had. As he puts it on the closer, “Sweet Love of Mine”: “The love we shared will always live here." — Nick Cristiano

Album release show, 8 p.m. July 31 at Franky Bradley’s 1320 Chancellor St. Tickets: $5.

Blood Orange

Angel’s Pulse

(Domino *** ½)

Dev Hynes says he always makes a little mixtape as a party favor to give to friends after each album he puts out, and following last year’s Negro Swan, he decided to make this one public. In the year of the R&B Mobius strip (including Solange’s fairly improvisatory When I Get Home), the collagist behind 2016’s brilliant Freetown Sound assembled one of the best. Go figure.

Maybe it’s the length — 14 songs in 32 minutes run the pace of a J Dilla beat tape if not quite the song-per-minute mileage of Philly’s own sui generis Tierra Whack. Or maybe he’s so songful that legitimate tunes like the opening “I Wanna C U” and the arresting “Gold Teeth” sound like fully-realized transmissions of Prince rarities from a passing radio. In fact, they beat actual Prince rarities. And the guest list is a where-are-they-now trip of recent vintage that brings along Arca, Tinashe, and on the best moment, triplet-wielding Three 6 Mafia alumni Project Pat and Gangsta Boo. Now release the others. — Dan Weiss