Frontispiece of The Happy Garden by Mary Ansell, 1912
How sad is it that the honeyed voices of '90s indie rock are fading and disintegrating before our very ears? And so few of those guys had decent singing voices in the first place! Songwriters like Robert Pollard and Joe Pernice are taking it in stride, though, adjusting their music to accommodate their aging pipes and using their maturity as an advantage to bring new nuances into their songs. For Pernice, it goes as far as depicting his graying beard in oils on the cover of his new record Goodbye, Killer, the first Pernice Brothers full-length since 2006's Live a Little. He hasn't completely let go and settled in to middle age - you can hear him straining to stay with the demanding melody of songs like "Jacqueline Susann" and he pushes to reach the high notes on the chorus of "The Great Depression" in a way that is a little sad.
For most of Goodbye, Killer, though, Pernice makes the most of growing old. He ditches the New-Orderisms of the last couple Pernice Brothers records and brings back the country sounds of the Scud Mountain Boys, the band of his youth. Country tunes are a good match for where he is now - I'm not sure about the cheesy "life on the road" lyrics of "We Love the Stage", but I like the George-Harrison-circa-1975 guitar on the title track, and the twangy "Newport News" is one of the album's strongest tracks. Goodbye, Killer's other strengths come in the form of Laura Stein's harmony vocals on a couple songs and some great lyrics (ones that Pernice wouldn't have pulled off in his younger years). References to Leni Riefenstahl, Ford Madox Ford, and bechamel sauce give an interesting new dimension to Pernice's love songs, making up for some tired-sounding guitar solos that muddy Pernice's clean pop arrangements.
At this point in his career, the best Pernice can hope for from the critics is "A return to form," the other options being "More of the same" or "Unable to recapture his former glory." For me, though, Pernice is doing something different on Goodbye, Killer instead of playing the same games he did when he was younger. He's at a point in his career where a song like the lovely folk song "The End of Faith" has a real poignancy, while "Jacqueline Susann" drips with a more seasoned bitterness and longing that's (arguably) more compelling than the angst and longing we get from younger songwriters.
"Jacqueline Susann" by the Pernice Brothers
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