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: I think I want to take up bird watching. The American version, not the British or Middle Eastern. I think it would be pretty interesting to sit out in the woods and watch birds. I bet it’s a lot more fun if you’re high as a piper. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never bird watched. And I don’t do any drugs. (Though I did instruct my manager to compose a press release in which I admit that I had, early in my musical career, experimented with performance-enhancing drugs.) I like the idea of having a checklist of birds that must be spotted and being one speckled warbler short of completing the collection. Not much different than needing to find that lipizzaner stallion coin or some philatelic holy grail or other. Except you’re out in nature. Alone. And you’re stoned out of your mind. Alone. And then you start thinking about some weirdo lurking in the bushes watching you watching birds. And then you start freaking out, wondering who’s watching the weirdo? The North American Common Weirdo Watcher, a capricious, insatiable bird. Screw bird watching. I’m going to stick with The Life Of Birds, presented by the great David Attenborough.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3eqSevtuKU
