From The Desk Of Joe Pernice: John Cunningham

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: I am not just saying this because Ashmont Records (the label I co-own) is reissuing his two late-20th-century masterpieces, but John Cunningham is an extraordinary musical talent. His albums Homeless House (1998) and Happy Go-Unlucky (2001) have just come out in North America as a single package. You can look on the Internet and read me praising these two albums. It’s nearly embarrassing, I admit. The records mean that much to me. No knock on John’s abilities, but I didn’t want to reissue these albums because I thought they’d make me a lot of money. Whenever I would ask people if they knew his records, the answers were almost always the same: I can’t find them anywhere. (Or he’d be confused with a couple other John Cunninghams, who are either dead or make music nothing like his.) It became something of a mission for me to keep these two great records in print … at least until my label goes down the shitter. The music is dark, classic pop. You’ll love it.

Video after the jump.