Songfacts®:

• Purple Mountains was David Berman's comeback following a decade's absence after the 2009 disbandment of his lo-fi country-rock outfit Silver Jews. Created over the course of four years, the album went through several failed attempts with different musicians and producers. He eventually laid it down with members of the New York folk-rock band Woods and others in Chicago and Brooklyn in 2018. Woods vocalist Jeremy Earl and multi-instrumentalist Jarvis Tavenier produced the project.
• Purple Mountains is a barely disguised diary of dissolution and self-examination. It opens with "That's Just the Way That I Feel," which is a catch-up for fans, a stocktaking of what Berman had been up to since Silver Jews dissolved.
  
  I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion
  Day to day, I'm neck and neck with giving in
  I'm the same old wreck I've always been
  
  "All 10 songs are autobiographical, in some aspect or another," Berman said in an interview published in Uncut magazine. "Writing them help me get through some bad fixes. I forced myself to see that I preferred the future where the bad thing happened and the song got written, to one where I would be spared the suffering yet had nothing to show for it."
  
  Asked to elaborate on what he means by "bad fixes," Berman replied: "I left Nashville and drifted out West for a year. I experienced what it was like to live for months at a time alone in the California desert and in a skid row hotel on East Hastings Street in Vancouver. There were things happening around me and back home that I had no use for in my life, but that made good material for song lyrics. When I'm writing well, I'm shunting cars carrying bad feelings into song houses I can walk away from."
• Berman talks about relocating to the Midwest in the third verse of "That's Just the Way That I Feel."
  
  I met failure in Australia
  I fell ill in Illinois
  I nearly lost my genitalia
  To an anthill in Des Moines
  I was so far gone in Fargo
  South Dakota got annoyed
  
  The "nearly lost my genitalia to an anthill" line is a playful poke at former Silver Jews bandmate and longtime friend, Bob Nastanovich.
  
  "My friend Bob Nastanovich lives in Des Moines," Berman told Little Village, "and I liked putting him in a song passed out while f---ing an anthill 'cause I love him so much."
• Purple Mountains was a critical darling upon its release, making the Top 10 in many publications' year-end lists, including Mojo, Noisey, Pitchfork, Spin, Stereogram, Uncut, and Vice.
• The Purple Mountains album was released on July 12, 2019, by Drag City. David Berman died by suicide on August 7, 2019, just four weeks after the album's release.