For more than a decade, the Pernice Brothers have mostly made plush, romantic orchestral pop that doesn’t gild the lily once tended by the Zombies, Walker Brothers and Elvis Costello. True to frontman Joe Pernice’s working-class nature, the band’s sixth and latest album, Goodbye, Killer (Ashmont), does away with the sighing string section and goes straight for the guitars, from the mod-rock riffing of “Jacqueline Susann” to the Teenage Fanclub power-pop of “Something For You.” After a four-year spell between albums, the Pernice Brothers return with their leanest and most efficient effort to date. Pernice will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Pernice: Before you get all up in my grill, just let me put it out there: I have absolutely no problem reading a sestina if it’s a good one. (I recommend those of great American poet Donald Justice.) Maybe your ass is chapped over a comment I once made in a rival music mag about not being the slightest bit interested in writing a sestina. Sorry, what can I say? I don’t like strict forms. I also don’t like the idea of making a true concept album (unless my former Scud Mountain Boys bandmate Stephen Desaulniers and I reconcile after 13 years and reform our WWII concept band, the Lower GIs.) I thought about doing an album based on the Stations Of The Cross, but the only station that really knocks my socks off is “Christ falls a second time.” (In the end, Christ fell three times leading up to his crucifixion.) I like that station because it shows real sticktoitiveness on JHC’s part. The Romans and all the bystanders were giving it to him pretty good, but he got up. (Much like Jake Lamotta in his famous bout with Sugar Ray Robinson.) But by the time Christ fell for the third time, I figure he was well out of his mind—having had the shit kicked out of him—and on some kind of divine automatic pilot. So getting up the third time seems more like His doing. If that was me, I would have stayed down after the first fall. Things might have worked out differently. Like I always say, we’re all just one or two bad decisions away from the gutter. Or, in this case, the cross. (It’s not a sestina, but I highly suggest the poem “Goodtime Jesus” by another great American poet James Tate.)
Video after the jump.
