Illustration from Charles Perrault's The Story of Blue Beard, 1914
I established authoritatively in a previous "We Love the Beach Boys" write-up that any song can qualify for the category simply by having a great harmony-heavy vocal breakdown. En route from the alt-country territory of the Scud Mountain Boys to his recent Brit-pop-inspired releases, Joe Pernice spent a while exploring the symphonic pop sounds and heavenly harmonies popularized by Brian Wilson. The strings-heavy songs on 1998's Overcome By Happiness reference Wilson's work, but let's talk about those vocal breakdowns. Off the top of my head, I can think of several great ones by the Pernice Brothers, including "7:30" and "Amazing Glow".
With the imminent release of Pernice's new record Goodbye, Killer, I find myself going back to some of these songs, and they really are as lovely as they sound in my rose-tinted memory. "Amazing Glow", from 2005's under-rated Discover a Lovelier You, might be my favorite - it teases you with a taste of that perfect "da da da da" chorus early in the song, and you know its going to come back later on with a vengeance. But, even knowing its coming, that outro knocks my socks off every time.
"Amazing Glow" by the Pernice Brothers
2 comments:
Nice post. I just wrote about the same song for my blog before finding this post, and linked to your entry.
John:
I checked out your blog entry - it's a very nice write-up about one of my favorite songs. Well done!
nathan
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