Pernice Brothers – Goodbye, Killer

There’s something about the way Joe Pernice has gone about his work that suggests he’s a man who feels he has something to prove. From as far back as his records with the Scud Mountain Boys, his lyrics have been packed with inter-textual literary and musical references, as though his need to set himself in the company of greats is as big as his desire to become great himself. His literary works probably represent the culmination of this: a novella based on the Smiths’ Meat is Murder, and last year’s publication of Pernice’s first full-length novel, with accompanying soundtrack including covers of Sebadoh and Plush, amongst others. In the hands of less accomplished artists, this could easily be perceived as mindless posturing, the assumption of a pretentious creative writing student that name-checking and referencing as many of your superiors as you possibly can is a reasonable substitute for actual intellectual substance.

Not so with the Pernice Brothers. For all Joe Pernice’s apparent desire to provide evidence for his intelligence, he rarely drops a reference that doesn’t have a wider textual relevance. So, when Goodbye, Killer’s second track, ‘Jacqueline Susann’ name-drops Ford Madox Ford, it’s not just so that Pernice can show off about knowing who Ford Madox Ford is (though this paragraph might be my way of showing off that I do) – it’s a perfectly weighted way to characterise the object of the song’s desire, who is “reading Ford Madox Ford and Jacqueline Susann,” one of the intellectual powerhouses of the modernist movement, and one of the original trashy novelists who paved the way for Jackie Collins, and, eventually, the novelistic works of Katie Price and Kerry Catona.

Musically, Goodbye, Killer finds the Pernice Brothers sounding more enthusiastic about what they’re doing than they have in a long time. It’s not that their previous two records, Live a Little and Discover a Lovelier You, were particularly bad in any way. They just both, at their worst, sounded like a band going through the motions, having churned out an album roughly every two and a half years since the Scud Mountain Boys’ debut in 1995. This time, having taken four years since the last Pernice Brothers album, they sound ready to play to their strengths again, and while I don’t doubt that Joe Pernice is still filled with burning desire to “prove himself”, he definitely sounds more at ease here, more comfortable simply doing what he’s good at. Aforementioned ‘Jacqueline Susann’ sees him revisit his more raucous, garage-rock influenced work, angular, staccato guitar provided by Bob Pernice and all. Later, ‘Not the Loving Kind’ might be their most beautiful, touching tune since the infamous ‘Chicken Wire’, Pernice repeating “I’m not the loving kind / It’s a fatal flaw” as if it might eventually make sense to whomever it is who wants him so badly to be the loving kind. ‘Newport News’ contains the excellent lyric “I’d kiss your ass to kiss your ass again”, and I could probably run through the entire tracklisting pulling out equally excellent moments.

It’s tempting to call this a return to form. But then, as I mentioned earlier, the Pernice Brothers never really were out-of form. Perhaps they didn’t feel quite so comfortable in their own skins, and the triumph of this album is that it sounds like it comes out of a much more confident place than either of the previous two. It’s probably safer to say that it’s their best album since their last album, and that in spite of its undeniable quality, it will not elevate the Pernices above their continually over-looked, continually under-rated status, and Joe Pernice will continue striving to prove himself to a world that, in the words of one of his heroes, won’t listen.