Pernice Brothers
The World Won't End
[Ashmont]
Rating: 7.2
Joe Pernice sure is miserable. And I don't mean just a little sad or having
an off day-- the guy is flat-out depressed, waiting for his life to end. At
least this is the impression I get from listening to his records. This is
the guy who once opened an album by intoning "I hate my life" over a
dirge-like pop arrangement.
Perhaps he's not actually that miserable and it's just his flair for
melodrama that makes his situation seem so dire. On "Our Time Has Passed,"
he describes breaking up with his girlfriend, comparing it to "a flash of
radiation that leaves the buildings where they stand." Pernice fills 11
songs with exactly this kind of sentiment on his second outing with the
Pernice Brothers, the inaugural release from Pernice's own Ashmont Records.
The World Won't End bounds in with the perfect pop of "Working Girls,"
which finds Pernice mulling the life of a lowly temp with lines like, "She
summered every winter through a calendar from paradise/ "I was here," she
scribbled in a restroom to prove she was alive/ All the working girls are
fine/ Sunlight sun shines/ Contemplating suicide or a graduate degree." The
six-piece band perversely backs this up with a peppy arrangement, setting up
the fundamental tension that makes this a successful record.
Combining depressing themes with infectious melodies and jubilant music is
hardly anything new-- Bobby Darin nearly perfected it in his too-brief career
decades ago; early They Might Be Giants records still stand as a fine example--
but the band and their conspirators (a total of ten people) give the music
just the right edge of melancholy when it needs it. This usually comes in
the form of David Trenholm's restrained string quartet arrangements. For the
most part, the band also avoids the elevator-ready patches that tainted their
debut.
Producer Thom Monahan, a long-time cohort of Pernice from his days in the
Scud Mountain Boys, lends the album an autumnal sound that smacks of recent
efforts by Archer Prewitt; you get the sense that the leaves are turning
outside, and the temperature dropping. It's probably safe to imagine that
the band, most of them New England natives, feel at home with a sound that
evokes that kind of imagery.
For his part, Pernice keeps on spinning out winning break-up songs and
thanatopses, such as "Flaming Wreck," in which he details his final thoughts
("I'm alright") as his aircraft plunges five miles into the ground, killing
all aboard. His sometimes ragged vocals receive some welcome help here as
well, with most of the band harmonizing gorgeously on the refrain. It's
this and countless other moments that offer insight into the meaning of the
album title: the world won't end; it already has.
But even though Pernice's lyrics threaten to turn into a pity party at any
second, the ebullient music that backs him always comes up strong, providing
concentrated multi-vitamin blasts of delicious pop. And at the end, the
record's closer, "Cronulla Breakdown," marries a closing-time-at-the-hotel-lounge
delivery with a fabulous Beatlesque melody, proffering a final swipe at
failed relationships with the line, "We try so hard to make the worst of a
bad situation," summing it all up over bongos and acoustic guitar.
It all amounts to what, for me, is the best record Pernice & Co. have made
yet. Though it had its moments, I was never in love with the Scud Mountain
Boys' brand of jazzy country, nor with Pernice's slow-core Chappaquiddick
Skyline project. Here, however, he and his latest band seem to have found a
comfortable vehicle for delivering his world-weary messages, and the results
are definitely worth hearing.
-Joe Tangari