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 somehow unwittingly managed to reference Werner Herzog in both my novella and novel. I’m not the biggest Herzog fan out there, but I’m definitely a good-sized one. It’s still strange, though, that he’s referenced in both books. (I also unwittingly referenced SeaWorld in both books. That’s even weirder, especially since I’ve never been. I guess I’m given to unconscious associations. For nearly an entire semester, I would start humming the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” while walking past a cafeteria milk machine back at UMass. I still don’t know why, other than it’s a great song.) Anyway, my wife gave me a copy of Herzog’s book Of Walking In Ice (Free Association). It’s a three-week diary of Herzog’s late-fall walk from Munich to Paris. He decided to make the journey on foot because he figured the terminally ill person waiting in Paris would not, could not, die until he arrived. That’s all I’ll say about the book. That, and it’s a good read.
Video after the jump.
