I have this recurring nightmare that involves Pernice Brothers. I dream that I go to the record store on a sunny Tuesday morning to buy their latest release. I unwrap the CD, pop it into the CD player in my Jetta, and...and!...and it sucks. I mean “sucks” in a way that albums haven’t sucked since Journey made “Raised on Radio” or Todd Rundgren decided that it was okay to rap. In my nightmare, Pernice Brothers’ crystal-clear pop has been replaced with Seattle grunge, or A.O.R. singalong choruses, or processed dance beats. The particular genre doesn’t matter; the nightmare is the same.
Fortunately, Pernice Brothers’ actual output neither leaves my palms sweaty nor makes me lose sleep. Their most recent release, the stunning Discover a Lovelier You, finds them true to form. Every track is delicately produced, simple at first but complex and multilayered on repeated listens. The track that I thought I would like the least on the album, the smarmily-titled “My So-Called Celibate Life,” has actually turned out to be my favorite: though it starts out with an echoed guitar phrase and programmed drums that recall Johnny Marr and Bernard Summer’s Electronic, the song itself reaches melodic heights heretofore unreached by Joe Pernice and the gang. “Snow” is an acoustic rocker that recalls The Smiths; the opener “There Goes the Sun” chugs along with Pernice’s vocals pushed precariously out into the front of the mix.
It is hard for me to understand why Pernice Brothers aren’t better known in the world of popular music. Perhaps it’s because the albums they offer are consistently filled with the kind of music that radio programmers and mainstream reviewers think went out with the bathwater of the early 1990’s. Perhaps it’s because the songs sound saccharine sweet, although many of them conceal a musical and emotional core that is anything but. All that matters to me is that Pernice Brothers resist the urge to change. I don’t know about you, but that fact sure makes me sleep better at night. |