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: A snail gets mugged by two turtles. The cops arrive on the scene to find the snail visibly shaken, resting on a log. One cop asks, “Can you describe the perpetrators?” “I don’t know,” answers the snail. “It all happened so fast.”
Now go listen to Joe Jackson’s “Fridays” followed by “The Band Wore Blue Shirts.”
Video after the jump.
