Giveaway: Send in the Clouds with the Silver Jews Tonight

David Berman has been pairing skewed character sketches and abstract comic narratives with skeletal chord progressions under the Silver Jews moniker ever since his days as a Whitney Museum security guard (where he worked with fellow indie luminary Steven Malkmus).

In a genre where lyrics are largely ignored in favor of jangly hooks and genre mining, Berman is the rare singer who can effortlessly project pathos, high-school romanticism, scat humor, and cosmic depression in a few scattershot phrases. (For our money, he's also the reigning master of the art form known as the "rock interview.") Newer Silver Jews records have largely replaced the withering starkness of works like "Starlight Walker" for a slick, countrypolitan professionalism, but Berman's lyrics seems all the stronger for being nestled amid (comparatively) hi-fi Nashville twang.

The notoriously stage-shy songwriter has only recently begun taking his band on the road, and will be rolling into the Emo's courtyard tonight, hot on the heels of his latest album Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, joined by fellow Tennessean James Jackson Toth and Austin's own Charlie Potts Magic Windmill Band.

Follow the jump for a chance to win tickets.