First Look: New Pernice Brothers Album

Released this week, Goodbye Killer is a lusty roar of triumph from one of America's preeminent, most literate, songwriters.

By Mike Shanley

Writing songs about relationships can pose a challenge as time goes on. When a 40-something sings about hot girls - as opposed to women - it can sound a little creepy. Or clichéd. Or else it feels like a desperate attempt to cling to youth, and that's never a good thing.

Not so for Joe Pernice. Right as the latest Pernice Brothers album is settling in, he's lusting after a femme on a train, but what's in her hands carries as much cred as what's in her pants: "I want to gum up her plans/ were that I was a book in her hand/ Christ, she's reading Ford Maddox Ford and Jacqueline Susann." It's a skilled twist on the subject and the phrasing nails it. The song, named for the second author in the lyric, also contains the hardest rock the Pernice Brothers have committed to disc since 2005's "Snow," with chunky power chords and a feverish guitar solo. The blast of passion doesn't last beyond this track, but it proves that this songwriter is ready to expand on the sound that marked his back catalog too.

After a series of adult symphonies to God, Pernice has broken a four-year silence with Goodbye Killer (Ashmont), an album that takes his finely crafted narrative style (read: tragic and beautiful) and tweaked the arrangements. He has pared down the quasi-orchestral sea of guitars and keyboards from earlier albums with the current lineup of his brother Bob, Ric Menck (Velvet Crush, Matthew Sweet) and James Walbourne (Son Volt, among others). The quartet has a more immediate live sound, as they switch from electric to acoustic guitars, deliver more of those distorted solos and drop in some dual guitar leads that sound like they originated on All Things Must Pass.

Lyrically, Goodbye Killer overflows with couplets - and even phrases - that sound as good out of context as they do within: "Now it only half-way scares me to the bone," ranks among the best of them ("The Loving Kind"). Always the writer's writer, Pernice even stops himself mid-chorus in another song to opine, "That's a metaphor, I believe." "We Love the Stage" roasts the life of a never-will-be musician who can't shake the performance bug even as success regularly misses the set. "It doesn't matter if the crowd is thin/ we sing to six the way we sing to ten/ we like the way an intro four-count sounds like three," he deadpans without getting maudlin or hokey while the band plays a jazzy soft shoe.

"Bechamel" almost gets the album off to a too-precious start, due to Pernice's over-enunciated vocal over the pristine acoustic guitars. He's much more convincing when he sings softly about relationships in disarray. But even this song manages to win the cynic over with its dinner party/seduction storyline, especially when he rhymes "cellophane" with "aspartame." The song's setting might be something the over-40 crowd can relate to, but the emotions of the song are timeless, which proves what a skilled songwriter Pernice is after all this time.